Manifold and American Cancer Society Collaborate to Modernize Observational Study Management

Leading cancer research institution will use the Manifold Observational Study technology to deliver a better experience for participants, study managers, and principal investigators

NEWTON, Mass., July 18, 2024 - Manifold, an AI-powered clinical data platform streamlining manual workflows in cancer research, today announced that the American Cancer Society (ACS) will leverage their platform to modernize its study management and support the organization’s groundbreaking VOICES of Black Women study. With Manifold, the American Cancer Society is streamlining all aspects of population research, including simplifying the participant experience for surveys and collection, and enhancing how study managers design dynamic surveys, engage with participants through personalized email and SMS outreach, and monitor participant data over many years.

Many organizations rely on legacy systems and spreadsheets to track participant data and manage a study. These manual workflows require countless hours of administrative time from teams that are often under-resourced. Working with ACS to understand the challenges that cancer researchers face, Manifold saw an opportunity to streamline study operations, create an engaging, consumer-friendly UI, leverage the modern data technology stack, and, ultimately, retire legacy systems.

“At Manifold, we believe that the unsung heroes of cancer population science – the participants and study managers – deserve the kind of delightful app experience they have in their daily lives,” said Vinay Seth Mohta, Manifold's CEO. “The Manifold Observational Study solution automates manual steps wherever possible, resulting in more engaged participants and empowered study managers. We’re honored to support the American Cancer Society in their groundbreaking cancer disparities research.”

The VOICES of Black Women study is the largest behavioral and environmental-focused population study of cancer risk and outcomes in Black women in the United States and will investigate why cancer incidence and mortality is higher among this group. Using the Manifold platform, ACS will enroll over 100,000 participants into the VOICES study and ask them to answer questions over 30 years. Data collected from the VOICES study will flow into the Manifold Cancer Data Management solution for scientific analyses. Results from this study will help better understand the multi-level drivers of incidence, mortality, and resilience of cancer and other health conditions among Black women for future generations. 

"My vision for modernizing cancer population science was a connected study operations hub for teams to do their work and collaborate without compromising security or privacy,” said Dr. Alpa Patel, Senior Vice President, Population Science at the American Cancer Society. “Manifold’s platform allows our team to spend more time on designing impactful studies and conducting research, and less time carrying out administrative tasks.”

Previously, the Manifold and ACS teams worked together to migrate ACS’s existing Cancer Prevention Studies to the Manifold platform, connecting 11 terabytes of multimodal data from 1.5 million participants and transforming it for researchers to analyze in the Manifold Cancer Data Science solution.

For more information on the VOICES of Black Women study, visit https://voices.cancer.org/.

‍