Listening, connecting, and building bridges to make more impact for patients with cancer

This is how Robert Jan Lamers describes his role as managing director of Hartwig Medical Foundation. For four months now, he has been leading the independent non-profit organization, which aims to support cancer patients with better treatment decisions. Hartwig achieves this through an innovative combination of advanced software, clinical data, and molecular data.

In his first months, Robert Jan spoke with doctors, hospitals, and other partners to better understand what is needed to bring data-driven care closer to the patient.

More impact

Everyone I meet welcomes me warmly. They know that the people working at Hartwig truly care about patients. That is also what attracted me to the organization and its mission.

Hartwig has built a strong foundation. Together with our partners, we are working towards greater impact. We actively look for ways to connect and speed things up. We do this within hospitals, in collaborations, and with partners.

We listen, look at where the challenges are, and think together about how we can make processes run as smoothly as possible. We ask our partners what they struggle with and try to remove those obstacles. Everything is focused on impact for patients and for society. This applies both to today’s patients and to future patients.

‘There are so many more patients we want to help. That sense of urgency is deeply felt, both within Hartwig and among our partners.’

Closer to the patient

We help today’s patients by working with physicians to bring data-driven decisions in healthcare closer to the patient. Hartwig’s staff have a lot of expertise in molecular data, clinical data, and in developing advanced software to analyze this data. As in many other sectors, database and software development are moving very fast.

Generating data is one thing, but turning data into useful information is another.

We help tomorrow’s patients by expanding our database and making it more accessible to researchers around the world. Of course, we do this with great care for data security.

Urgency

The tools we develop are seen as valuable. There are so many more patients we want to help. That sense of urgency is deeply felt, both within Hartwig and among our partners. We know that together we may run into challenges, such as the logistics of collecting biopsies and blood samples, the costs of sequencing, and the secure storage and linking of data.’

There are many different data sources, and the more you link them, the better you can support treatment decisions for patients. That is why we connect data across different databases and make clear agreements with our partners about data security. It is important to do this carefully and safely, in line with national and international privacy rules.

Costs also play a role, for example for the most comprehensive form of molecular diagnostics: WGS. Fortunately, these costs are decreasing. There is now reimbursement for WGS for certain patient groups. We hope that more patient cohorts will become eligible for this reimbursement.

Improving care together

The goal of Hartwig Medical Foundation is clear: improving care for patients with cancer. With innovative software, clinical data analysis, and molecular diagnostics, we support treatment decisions. This helps patients receive the right treatment at the right time and creates valuable knowledge that we make available for research and further improvements in healthcare.

We have developed strong tools to support this. By listening, connecting, and building bridges, we can make the greatest impact. We are happy to do this together.

Robert Jan Lamers, Managing Director of Hartwig Medical Foundation.