Development of a Standardized Electronic Treatment Plan Builds for NCI-supported Clinical Trials Year 2

NIH RePORTER · NIH · P30 · $300,000 · view on reporter.nih.gov ↗

Abstract

Healthcare institutions utilize electronic healthcare records (EHR) to support patients with elaborate treatment plans, specifically those related to oncology regimens. These treatment plans traditionally are created in accordance to the respective institutions’ content expert, EHR configuration, and local guidelines for standard of care. Many research studies with investigational agents also contain complex treatment regimens which undergo the same workflow and scrutiny before implementation. Many of these studies are implemented across several health institutions, including those initiated by the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Multisite studies have an inherent need to be standardized across sites to reduce variation. However, because institutions utilize local EHR configuration, standards of care, and content experts to create these study treatment plans from scratch, unnecessary study variations between participating site cans exist. Furthermore, delay in study implementation may exist as a result of each health system’s need to identify disease, study, and EHR build experts who can commit time for study collaboration and implementation. The goal of this project is to develop a consortium for standardizing NCI supported EHR treatment plans to alleviate study variation and time-to-implementation for participating sites. The project plan involves establishing a subcommittee of experts within a pre-existing group known as the Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium. This consortium consists of members with significant participation in NCI supported research studies. Members from this consortium will include experts in NCI-related studies, EHR build creation, as well as management in research proposals and informatics operations. This group will convene regularly to compare previous NCI sponsored treatment plans within their respective EHR to develop agreed upon standards for creating NCI protocols in the EHR. These standards will then be utilized to create treatment plan templates for participating institutions to integrate within their respective EHR systems. Measures to analyze successful implementation will be time related data concerned with duration of implementation from request, initial IRB approval to study activation, and survey data related to the template’s ease of use and interpretation. The consortium will review these data regularly for improvement and feasibility to continue work in standardizing treatment plans. This work will be shared among participating EHR and NCI members.

Key facts

NIH application ID
10440230
Project number
3P30CA046592-32S3
Recipient
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AT ANN ARBOR
Principal Investigator
Eric R. Fearon
Activity code
P30
Funding institute
NIH
Fiscal year
2021
Award amount
$300,000
Award type
3
Project period
2021-06-01 → 2022-05-31