COTA, Inc. to Speak at the Vatican's 2016 Cellular Horizons Conference

VATICAN CITY--(Marketwired - Apr 27, 2016) - Key leadership members of COTA, Inc., a health care informatics company, will travel to Vatican City this week after accepting an invitation to speak at Cellular Horizons, The Vatican's Third International Conference on the Progress of Regenerative Medicine and Its Cultural Impact. COTA will present on Friday, April 29.

In a session moderated by Dr. Sanjay Gupta, called "Rationalizing Health Care Through Big Data," Dr. Andrew Pecora, COTA founder and executive chairman, and chief innovations officer and vice president of cancer services at Hackensack University Medical Center, will discuss health care inequality and ways to increase both access and affordability of care by reducing waste. Accompanying him in the discussion will be one of America's leading experts in population health and care management, Dr. Glenn D. Pomerantz, chief medical officer for Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey and COTA board member, and pharmaceutical and biotech expert, Steven Kafka, Ph.D., president and chief operating officer for Foundation Medicine, Inc.

"We are honored to be given an invitation to speak on behalf of COTA at the Vatican alongside global leaders in cellular and technological innovations in cancer," Pecora said. "By utilizing our team's deep oncologic expertise to develop national, evidence-based benchmarks of patient outcomes and costs, we're equipping providers, payers and pharma with the objective data needed to reduce wasteful spending and provide the best possible outcome for every cancer patient, every time. We couldn't be more grateful for the opportunity to share on a global level how our informatics will enable value-based medicine, expanding the reach of health care services to more people around the world."

COTA is dedicated to making the best care clear by improving data to research-grade, then analyzing that data against proprietary benchmarks to provide answers caregivers and life sciences need to improve outcomes for all patients while reducing costs. It is because of the company's strides in value-based medicine that the Vatican took notice and invited COTA to present on how precision medicine paired with precision analytics can help to reduce variance, increasing both access and availability to quality care for cancer patients. Additionally, Pecora, Pomerantz and Kafka will address how blood biopsies will change utilization of precision medicine, how the combination of precision medicine and analytics can change reimbursement for health care, and how a partnership between providers, big data and payers will reshape the way health care is delivered globally.

"COTA stands at the forefront of the convergence of technology and health care delivery, enabling practitioners to deliver more precise therapy to individuals with cancer," said Dr. Robin Smith, president of The Stem For Life Foundation. "By leveraging the value of data, they're empowering oncologists with actionable insights to help make health care more efficient, rationalizing health care costs while enhancing patient outcomes."

Hosted by the Vatican's Pontifical Council For Culture, The Stem For Life Foundation and the STOQ Foundation, this exclusive, three-day, international event will gather the world's leading cell therapy scientists, physicians, patients, ethicists and leaders of faith, government and philanthropy to discuss the latest cellular therapy breakthroughs as well as hope for the future. Attended by Holy Father Pope Francis, moderated by renowned journalists and broadcasted around the world, the 2016 event will have a unique focus on pediatric cancers and rare genetic diseases, as well as diseases that occur with aging.

For more information on COTA and how it is reshaping health care and making the best care clear, visit www.oncota.com

About COTA, Inc.
COTA is the health care informatics company that builds research-grade, real-world data to exponentially improve outcomes, reduce cost and ensure the right care for the right patient every time. The patented COTA Nodal Address System (CNA) is the first and only digital classification system that transforms prognostically significant variables into a digital code -- precisely categorizing patient factors, their diseases and intended therapies to measure treatment outcomes, identify variances in care and enable quality benchmarking, research, discovery and the transition to value-based medicine. For more information, please visit www.oncota.com. COTA -- Best Care Made Clear.™

About The Stem For Life Foundation (SFLF)
The Stem For Life Foundation (SFLF) is the educational and advocacy subsidiary of The Cura Foundation and is devoted to fostering global awareness of the potential for regenerative medicine to treat and cure a range of deadly diseases and debilitating medical conditions, as opposed to merely treating their symptoms. The Foundation stands at the forefront of a fundamental shift away from traditional drug treatment in favor of amplifying the body's natural repair mechanisms to vanquish disease. For more information on the Stem For Life Foundation, please visit www.stemforlife.org. To follow the Vatican event on Twitter, please join the conversation @StemForLife or via the hashtag #UNITETOCURE.