Carolyn Starrett ’98, CEO of Flatiron Health
Cancer research can be slow, cumbersome, and contradictory. Clinical trials can sometimes be expensive, exclusionary and inadequate for real-world populations.
Enter Flatiron Health, whose CEO is Carolyn Starrett ’98. Founded in 2012, Flatiron Health has created the leading U.S. source for real-world cancer data. Its experts collect, anonymize, and organize clinical, genomic, and other data for research, based on patients’ electronic medical records. Over 280 community cancer clinics in the U.S. use Flatiron’s OncoCloud™ platform and services. Flatiron also works with top academic cancer centers, leading developers of cancer treatments, researchers, and regulators in the U.S. and around the world.
“We work with scientists, companies, researchers, and regulatory bodies,” Starrett says. Flatiron curates the data that comes from routine care in patients’ electronic medical records to help drug developers spot potential areas for new research, or for fine-tuning a medication if real-life problems emerge. Personal information is stripped from the patient data, in compliance with federal patient privacy laws.
Starrett says Flatiron uses data and technology to help accelerate approval of and access to cancer therapies for people navigating a cancer diagnosis. They work with researchers and doctors across the cancer care system to make clinical trials faster and more inclusive, use real-world data to drive research, and support doctors in choosing the best treatments for their patients. Flatiron’s mission is to learn from every person with cancer and use that knowledge to transform cancer care, she says.
Such work naturally involves reams of data, and Starrett, who majored in English at Brown University after graduating from Taft, might not seem a likely candidate to head such a data-oriented company.
“I’ve always been someone fascinated by problem solving,” she says. “I saw very early in my career the transformative [possibility] of data. I was attracted to the problems data could solve.”
Such as developing ways to mine electronic medical records for actual experiences patients were dealing with so that therapies could be fine-tuned, expanded, or discontinued.
Starrett at one of Flatiron’s Everyone@, an all-company meeting where teams across the business share updates
“Data—and data science in particular—has the potential to transform how we experience the world,” Starrett says. “In my work, it’s about smarter decisions and better insights to advance the development of new therapies and personalize treatments for cancer patients. But in every aspect of my life, data sits behind my decisions and how I navigate my day—whether it be as simple as where to go for dinner and how to get there, or as broad as where to invest my time and energy.”
She was drawn to working at Flatiron because it was an opportunity to work with “incredible people on a mission that really matters—to learn from the experience of every person with cancer.”
Over the next few years, Starrett says Flatiron will delve more deeply into generative AI to analyze data in order to seek out promising areas for research and development of new cancer-fighting therapies, not just in the United States, but also internationally in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan, where Flatiron has expanded its operations over the last three years.
Looking at the landscape today, there are many core problems that still persist, Starrett says.
“It still takes over 10 years to bring new oncology treatments and therapies to market. Clinical trials are expensive, inefficient, and slow. They don’t really represent the patients who might ultimately receive and benefit from those medicines.”
Using Flatiron data, physicians and researchers can spot trends in therapies that can inform treatment plans. With instinctive workflows, up-to-date treatment guidelines, and actionable data, Flatiron helps cancer centers and community oncologists improve the patient experience, while also streamlining operations and improving revenue by providing information about real-world experiences.
“Our mission has always been to improve and extend lives of people with cancer. The health care journey is deeply frustrating,” she says. “We’ve seen miraculous advances. For 12 years, Flatiron Health has been part of the core of understanding real-world data and informing treatment and drug development. We are closing the gap between research and the care people actually receive.”