Closing the Care Gap with the Cloud

Odds are that every single one of us, in some way, has been impacted by cancer. According to the World Health Organisation, cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for nearly one in six deaths in 2020. Yet, many cancers can be cured if detected early and treated effectively. In anticipation of World Cancer Day, I wanted to take a moment to think through the impact that cloud-based technologies can have on research, treatment, and equitable health solutions.

Imagine a world where we can enhance clinical insights at the point of care to help identify the best treatment or prevention options for cancer patients. A world where researchers and clinicians can query thousands of variants across multiple genes at once to understand how genomic variation, joined with corresponding clinical data, may affect human health or predict clinical outcomes. Technologies like the cloud and purpose-built services like Amazon Omics will help bioinformaticians, researchers, and scientists store, query, analyse, and generate insights from genomic, transcriptomic, and other omics data to turn this into a reality.

AWS healthcare customers like Indivumed are boosting cancer research with powerful analytics built on AWS. And AWS Partners like Gritstone Oncology are advancing the field of immuno-oncology to fight cancer in patients with the most difficult-to-treat tumours.

According to a Nature clinical oncology review, technological advances in germline and tumour genomics are helping to drive progress in explaining the causes of cancer at the individual and population level and offer new insights and potential opportunities to prevent certain cancers. Genomic data is being used to help clinicians make personalised decisions at the point of care, allowing for a more holistic view of and treatment options for patients.

Now, let’s take it a step further. If we can use the cloud to help prevent and cure cancer in high-income countries, surely we can also use it to help us break down healthcare inequity. We have the opportunity to harness the power of health-related data in the cloud through the open exchange of information, expertise, and technology among countries of all income levels to ensure representation of diverse populations, ethnicities, and cultures when it comes to the treatment of cancer and beyond. This is one reason why AWS committed $40M to leverage the power of the cloud to advance health equity globally.

It’s time to close the care gap.