Meet Jacob Koskimaki, CancerLinQ’s Director of Data Analytics and Commercial Operations. Jacob’s path to CancerLinQ brings a wealth of knowledge and experience. Originally from Salt Lake City, Utah, Jacob attended University of Utah where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and a Bachelor of Science degree in Biomedical Engineering.
Jacob continued his education by earning a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. It was during these studies that he discovered that his passions included research, science, engineering, and data. When Jacob learned of CancerLinQ, he could immediately see the potential of the platform. He was excited to join CancerLinQ after its initial launch, working with some of the very early CancerLinQ practices.
In his seven years with ASCO and CancerLinQ, Jacob has come to his current position of managing data operations, including commercial data operations. His team is responsible for outbound curation and natural language processing (NLP) data deliveries in the platform, curation work, quality measure implementation, NLP studies, and data quality resolution. In his time with us, Jacob has helped shape the quality measure offerings and design for the QOPI Certification reporting through CancerLinQ.
What has your biggest achievement been at CancerLinQ?
I’m most proud of team we have created and the enormous volume and quality of work we do. Much of our success is evident in the interest of practices joining CancerLinQ and the research that has come from the use of CancerLinQ Discovery.
I have myself contributed to several publications that show gaps in oncology care in electronic health systems and submitted an abstract that was shown at the ASCO 2022 Annual Meeting on how natural language processing can improve manual curation processes (with colleagues from CancerLinQ, Tempus, ConcertAI, and AstraZeneca). In addition, there were 12 abstracts published using CancerLinQ data during this same meeting. This is significant and shows the research interest in the oncology community, which will continue to grow as we expand our data assets.
How do you support the CancerLinQ mission?
CancerLinQ is, first and foremost, a platform to improve the quality of care and deliver deidentified data sets as a secondary objective to that goal. We have realized this vision in part through our SmartLinQ QOPI Certification Program Pathway and by establishing the SmartLinQ Quality Platform as a core practice offering. Central to the mission is the use of data analytics to unlock key insights in our data. There is now room to grow this initiative even more through decision-support products and clinical trial facilitation.
What do you see as CancerLinQ’s biggest opportunity for impact?
CancerLinQ is a remarkable platform for the oncology community. The fact that our data is from across different source systems, types of oncology practices, and geography make it an extremely valuable asset. I would also love to see more of our existing practices leverage the CancerLinQ network to support their own quality of care initiatives.
What do you do for fun when not working?
I love the outdoors and am an active hiker and runner. I am also a yoga instructor and musician. I find diverse hobbies and interests to be essential to create the balance needed to sustain the pace of an exciting and challenging work environment. I also ensure that I meditate and connect with friends and family every day.
