A Pilot Program of Automated Patient Identification for Survivorship Resources Using Clinical Oncology Pathways

Manual electronic health record (EHR) reviews to identify patients eligible for survivorship resources can be arduous and, more importantly, risk omitting otherwise appropriate patients. Automated patient screening can make this process more efficient and accurate. Here, we discuss the creation of a new data service to expedite and improve the quality of the patient identification process.

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) oncologists navigate our web-based clinical pathways decision-support platform each time a patient starts a new therapy. For every navigation, structured data about patient and disease characteristics, clinical settings, relevant biomarkers, and selected treatments are collected. Combining this with information about patient status and visits creates a foundation for a standardized data source that can identify patients eligible for survivorship resources based on disease-specific criteria. This information is displayed in a Tableau dashboard with a daily update cadence.

Survivorship programs access this dashboard to extend survivorship resources to relevant patients.

As of April 2024, we have identified 272 DFCI patients with melanoma, renal cell carcinoma (RCC), or testicular cancer who are candidates for survivorship resources. With eight years of historical clinical pathways navigation data, scheduling information, and survival status, patients who met the disease-specific criteria and general eligibility requirements were identified in near real-time.

Table 1. Eligible Patients With Testicular Cancer, Melanoma, and RCC
Abbreviation: RCC, renal cell carcinoma.

Authors:

Carly Powell, MPS¹; Christine L. Caranfa¹; Matthew Rice¹; Alex Post¹; Trang N. Nguyen¹; Sunyi Zhang, MS¹; Cari Ryding, RN, MSN¹; Alicia K. Morgans, MD, MPH¹; Elizabeth I. Buchbind, MD¹; David M. Jackman, MD¹

Affiliation:

¹Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA