Aster Insights transforms the world’s largest observational research study in oncology with Microsoft Azure

Cancer impacts the lives of millions of people each year. Aster Insights, a provider of technology-enabled scientific intelligence for oncology discovery, accelerates cancer drug and diagnostic product research and development to improve outcomes for patients with cancer.

Aster Insights leads a consortium of the nation’s top academic cancer centers that is conducting the world’s largest and longest-running observational research study in oncology. Through this unique collaboration, Aster Insights harmonizes de-identified and lifetime-consented multi-modal patient data for research purposes, delivering novel insights that power oncology breakthroughs.

Migrating over 3.5 petabytes of data to Microsoft Azure for security and compliance

Aster Insights’ immense amount of data—over 3.5 petabytes and growing—poses unique challenges for storage and analytics. In 2021, the company decided that its dispersed data storage was limiting its ability to drive innovative analysis and research. “The way our infrastructure was set up, we had clinical data stored in one place, and genomic sequencing housed in another software as a service platform,” says Owyn Richen, Chief Technology Officer of Aster Insights. “It wasn’t built in a way that we could rapidly evolve new products, let alone easily conduct research analyses across the entire body of data.”

The company began considering how to advance its data management and storage capabilities while improving overall business function. The team recognized that Microsoft understood the healthcare industry’s compliance and security requirements and saw that the features and capabilities of Microsoft Azure were aligned with those needs. “Microsoft stood ahead of the pack for us from a security perspective,” says Richen. Aster Insights chose to begin migrating its extensive data from its existing cloud service to Azure.

Saving in storage and computing costs with Azure

Aster Insights worked closely with Microsoft to unify its data sets and began using multiple Azure features for storage and analysis. It was able to integrate its disparate information sources into one location with the help of Azure Data Factory. The migration also made it possible for the company to take advantage of services such as Azure Synapse Analytics for sophisticated analyses of its large data sets. It found that Azure Batch, a compute management service, could process and reprocess its data pipelines at scale, running thousands of samples in parallel. Aster Insights’ data and insights have informed over 150 peer-reviewed research publications to date, and the company expects its increased analytical sophistication to significantly quicken its pace in producing high-quality discoveries published in top peer-reviewed journals.

Overall, Aster Insights’ migration to Azure has saved both storage and computing costs. The company migrated its sizable data sets with no business disruptions and quickly began using its new data processing and analytic capabilities to develop and deliver innovative products, including a new digital pathology solution.

Reducing manual work on business processes by 90 percent with Dynamics 365

Aster Insights also began using other Microsoft offerings to improve its overall business function. Newly independent from its former parent company, the business wanted to improve the management of its finances and supply chain. It turned to Microsoft Dynamics 365 and in just three months built robust enterprise resource planning capability and reduced manual work for some processes by 90 percent. With its new system, Aster Insights streamlined expense and payment processing to provide a simplified customer experience.

As the data nexus and partner for clients ranging from academia to the life sciences industry, Aster Insights sought to improve collaboration and communication tools for its audiences. The company used Microsoft Power BI to create an array of dashboards and metrics that were accessible across its range of stakeholders, making it easier for them to visualize and understand the insights coming from the newly enhanced business intelligence capabilities.

"We’re working across 18 academic cancer centers with a variety of electronic health record systems and processes,” says Dan Elgort, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Aster Insights. “Power BI has been valuable for us because we’ve been able to build interactive dashboards and provide a central place for our entire organization to see what we’re achieving with operational key performance indicators and data quality metrics.”

Enhancing data protection and cybersecurity posture in three months

Aster Insights’ extensive infrastructure houses information from its large-scale observational research study, making security and compliance a top priority. The company deployed a range of solutions to enhance its cybersecurity and data protection posture during its migration to Azure, including Microsoft Purview to solidify governance and protection. To identify and mitigate potential cyberthreats, the company turned to a combination of Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Defender for Cloud.

The suite of solutions that Aster Insights chose gave the company new capabilities, and the automated features helped it reduce the mean time to detection for security threats to less than one hour. The company was also able to move vulnerability scanning in-house and build a management program from the ground up within three months. “The various security tools help our small security and IT teams have an outsized impact just in terms of how they protect patient information,” says Richen.

Creating a new digital pathology capability in half the expected time

The team at Aster Insights is passionate about advancing cancer research in collaboration with clinicians, academics, patients, and industry partners. The company successfully migrated an extensive data set from an existing cloud provider to Azure with no business disruptions, providing a blueprint for other healthcare organizations trying to manage their information securely.

Aster Insights was able to quickly realize the benefits of its new integrated data solution. It launched a new digital pathology modality in only three months, an estimated 50 percent reduction in the development timeline. The company is excited to continue working with Microsoft to deliver additional capabilities, including a potential interface to share data and collaborate across the network. “We’ve really benefited from our partnership with Microsoft. Beyond the quality of its platform capabilities, Microsoft has advocated for us with other partners and provided consistent support,” says Richen.