Cota, the leading data and technology platform for value-based precision medicine, and Hackensack Meridian Health (HMH), New Jersey's most integrated and comprehensive health care system, has announced a landmark partnership to help improve clinical and cost outcomes for cancer patients.

As part of the partnership, HMH will integrate Cota Nodal Addresses (CNAs) directly into its Epic EHR to help support decision-making by oncologists at the point of care. CNAs are generated by a unique, patented digital data classification methodology that maps all of cancer by organizing patients into groups based on all the personal and clinical factors that matter to the individual. Each patient with the same CNA can be considered medically identical, and thus should have similar treatments and outcomes. Physicians guided by CNAs are better able to personalize treatment for each individual patient based on their individual biology and disease.

"Incorporating CNAs directly into EHR systems to help guide decision-making in real-time is the next step in helping healthcare professionals increase individual patient outcomes and lower the total cost of care for the population they serve," said Dr. Andrew Pecora, Cota's founder and executive chairman. "Physicians and healthcare administrators at Hackensack Meridian Health have already been using our web-based CNA Guided Care technology platform to derive insights that improve overall practice decisions and we're excited to expand this capability to the point of care for each individual patient."

"Incorporating CNAs as a way to quickly help physicians find only the clinical factors that matter will have a huge impact in increasing the accuracy of care decisions," said Jeremy Marut, director of enterprise architecture at Hackensack Meridian Health. "Additionally, having access to CNAs will help dramatically reduce the time spent looking for information and increase the efficiency of our physicians."

Cota is a technology platform that enables providers, payers, and life science companies involved in diagnosing and treating complex diseases to optimize the outcomes of individual patients and lower the overall cost of the patient population served. It is powered by the patented Cota Nodal Address (CNA) system, a unique digital classification methodology built by leading physicians and data scientists. The CNA is the first and only system that precisely categorizes patient factors, their diseases and intended therapies, enabling precision medicine at scale.

Cota's technology enriches raw medical records to create research-grade data, and joins it with a suite of analysis, visualization, and management tools. This enables providers, payers, and life sciences companies to analyze, report on, and research outcomes, costs, treatments, and quality at any granularity and stage of the patient journey. The result is a constantly improving system that merges technology and science to help improve the lives of patients everywhere.