Dr. Tom Coughlin, Founder and CEO of OncRef, has developed a platform that provides oncologists with a single source of information to keep up with the rapidly evolving field of cancer research and therapies. OncRef is addressing oncologists' information overload and time constraints, as well as curating and structuring the vast amount of available cancer data. The company recognizes the potential for AI and data-driven tools to advance cancer care while acknowledging the challenges of developing hallucination-proof AI models for use in the medical field.  

Tom explains, "OncRef is looking to create a single source of truth for oncologists to keep up with the field of cancer. Cancer is now progressing so quickly with more personalized medicine. And now, with AI, more research publications are being published than ever, making it extremely hard to stay on top of this field. So, we're making it very easy by providing oncologists and oncology professionals with a single source of truth, all curated, and giving them exactly what they need rather than having them drink through the firehose of data out there because it's too much right now. So we're taking that pain out of it." 

"The data is organized in a cancer-specific way. So, categorized by specific cancers and by having a consistent user interface and interaction, we just add the data to our interface so that the user can see what's changing over time. They do not have to wonder where the data is or be uncertain if they are getting lost in that information or perhaps missing what's happening on that constantly moving and progressing leading edge of cancer research."

"We rely on a lot of government data and published information. This government data is sometimes very disorganized and unstructured. So, we have a robust team of data engineers that can structure the data and apply some categorization and labeling using our medical team, which curates the data so we can provide some structure to it to present it on our platform. That's really what we're most excited about. By structuring all of this unstructured data, we're setting the stage for a future Large Language Model or system that we can have less likelihood of hallucination. So, by having structured curated data, we will move towards something more reliable and give oncology an AI they can trust."

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