Nasha Fitter is the mother of three daughters, one of which was diagnosed with a rare disease called FOXG1. After her daughter's diagnosis, she got to work and co-founded the FOXG1 Research Foundation. She's dedicated to leading the research strategy and finding a cure for every child in the world with FOXG1 syndrome. She's here to talk to us about her work as the Director of the Rare and Neurological Disease Division for Ciitizen, a technology company that enables fast and seamless access to patient data. In this episode, you'll learn about the most innovative medical record platform that will be open and accessible to parents, caregivers, clinicians, academics, bio pharma and researchers. Their goal is to eliminate the slow, manual and expensive processes that are currently used to collect data.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
Tell us about you, your family and how you came to be a part of the rare disease community.
I have three children and my youngest daughter, Amara was diagnosed with FOXG1 syndrome when she was 9 months old, right after she started having seizures. Before that, I worked in education technology, but when this happened to Amara, my focus became her and how I could drive scientific research forward. I started the FOXG1 Research Foundation with a group of other parents and that has taken me along a journey where I came in contact with Ciitizen. I thought they were going to solve a need I was having within the FOXG1 community and that's how I became completely immersed in this research and community.
Tell us about Ciitizen and your role there.
Ciitizen is a platform that's patient mediated. Ciitizen collects all of your medical documents, digitize them and put them on a portal for you so you can easily access them and send them for second opinions. They have spent the last few years investing in machine learning and AI technology to read unstructured medical documents and extract data from them. This information in the aggregate can be used by academic researchers to further their research and understand disease progression and by bio pharma companies looking for natural history studies. Ciitizen is also working on clinical trial matching where patients can be matched to trials to be a part of.
How do you get started if you want to have medical records digitized?
If you are a breast cancer patient, you can go to the website and sign up now. For other disorders, we're working with advocacy groups to build out the ontology, the framework of the disease. In the rare disease neurological space for example, we have started working on rett syndrome and mitochondrial diseases. We first engage with the advocacy group, get to understand the disease, talk to clinicians and invite patients to join the platform.
Can doctors, geneticists and scientists access the platform and perform their own search?
The platform is free for clinicians and academic researchers who are the most excited about this program because they don't have accessible information about everyone in a rare disease community. Clinicians are finding this is a really easy way to look at data in a scaled way for a specific disease group. When you go to a clinician for a second opinion, they have to gather and sift through your prior medical records. Now they can use a neuro card where we have listed out all the critical elements with easy access to the records and get a good sense of data before your appointment. We're saving clinicians a ton of time.
If all these medical records are in this database, how do we protect our privacy?
Ciitizen is HIPPA and GDPR compliant, all of your data is stored securely and with an audit trail. You own all the medical records, so no identifiable information can be shared with anyone unless you choose to share them. All Ciitizen can do is share your non-identifiable aggregated data, which means everyone in you cohort with a shared disease has aggregated information that can be shared with researchers trying to find a cure for your disease. The security is really important.
How can parents and caregivers help move this platform forward?
It's a joint effort. We are onboarding SYNGAP patients next week and we have a partnership with that advocacy group to find a cure. Having advocacy groups is so critical. Within the rare disease community, groups need to centralize and come together. We're hoping to work with various advocacy groups to help them in a joint effort and to bring in patients.
What is a natural history study?
A natural history study is clinician-entered data that can be supplemented with patient outcomes. Traditionally, academic centers will conduct a natural history study, patients will travel every few months for doctors to collect information. The problem with the model of these natural history studies is that they're expensive, they decide who they share it with and what they do with the data. The beauty of a digital natural study is that data can be collected from anywhere globally, patients don't have to travel and the data can be shared with every pharma company interested in the disease.
What final thoughts do you have for parents and caregivers?
The main takeaway for patients is that you have a strong voice and your data can go far. For advocacy leaders, it's your responsibility to gather your patients and create digital natural history studies. It's important for the community that you provide data that helps them make better decisions and that you're providing academic researchers and pharma companies access to data that helps your disease get on their radar. It's important for advocacy group leaders to take initiative and for patients and community members to contact your advocacy leader about a natural history study.