In the fight against cancer: a multidisciplinary approach

Chronic noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) cause 90% of premature deaths in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Moreover, 86% are due to cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancer, respiratory diseases and mental disorders. The situation is getting worse every year: the population of many countries is aging, and more than 80% of people over 65 are already suffering from chronic diseases. Add to this social, economic and environmental issues. In the European Union alone, 700 billion euros are spent annually on the fight against chronic NCDs, up to 80% of the total health care budget. Therefore, many countries are introducing new methodologies and approaches, trying to improve the effectiveness of health care and reduce costs.

The situation can be improved by implementing the concept of continuous care, which requires the use of advanced information systems. And one of the key principles for polyclinics and hospitals becomes coordinated care (Coordinated Care) for patients from doctors of different specialties. After all, people older than 60 most often suffer from several chronic NCDs at the same time. And mortality from cancer is much higher if it proceeds against the background of other diseases and complications.
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Reducing the mortality rate of cancer patients allows the use of information systems in which various health indicators are recorded within various medical disciplines, and the dynamics of their change.


Coordinated care is a fundamental principle in the treatment of cancer patients. It implies close cooperation of doctors of different specialties, resource management and interaction with patients, including remote ones.

Ideally, the cancer information system should consist of the following components:

• A case management system based on an Integrated Patient Record and a central module responsible for aggregating data from other components of the system and from external sources. This makes it possible to unify all medical institutions within a common information network for the sake of facilitating resource management and generating structured data based on each visit, procedure and development of cancer.
• Application for managing processes of prescription treatment and drug therapy . Allows you to reduce the likelihood of errors and more economical to spend stocks of drugs.
• An application for logging diagnoses and treatment recommendations.
• Consultation online platform available to medical professionals who can evaluate therapeutic approaches developed by the community of oncologists.
• A platform for working with patients , allowing them to interact with them directly in order to prevent disease, treatment and rehabilitation.

An integrated approach to managing case histories implies:

• monitoring prescription and real-time drug exposure,
• monitoring the availability of specialists during the work shift,
• the presence of restrictions and recommendations for working with a specific patient,
• and legal justification for all procedures.

In addition, all information must be made available to all participants in the process. A specialized viewer can help here, making it easier to work with diagnoses for doctors of various specialties who participate in the treatment of cancer patients. Here is a clear and detailed information about all the procedures and research done. The data is loaded from different sources: EMR, pathology research systems, radiotherapy systems, radiology systems, etc.

Example of general information about a patient with breast cancer:



Schedule of all completed studies and procedures:



The oncology network typically serves a number of geographically distributed clinics. Proper interdisciplinary interaction (accurate diagnoses), national resource management (timely diagnostics, emergency care), remote counseling and interaction with patients through a mobile application (educated society, high accessibility of health care) will help reduce the mortality rate within the state.

The main directions of improving performance:

• Reducing clinical risks due to the cooperation of therapists, oncologists, pathologists, radiologists, surgeons, pulmonologists, social workers, psychologists and nurses in order to implement effective risk management processes: control over medication appointments, cross-checks and alerts / warnings for doctors of different specialties.
• Improve productivity and reduce costs through benchmarking and forecasting.
• Reduced time loss due to the online availability of all data and medical assessments needed to present the current state of patients and support further treatment decisions.
• Standardization of processes to:
  
  • Registration information during the transition of the patient from one doctor to another.
  • Reliable archiving.
  • Providing access and download information across all offices and departments included in the information network.
• Automate the management of alerts and warnings (prescriptions, medications, drug trafficking, etc.) and full compliance with the standards of the Joint Commission on Quality and Safety.
• Systematization of clinical studies as the final result of the work of the entire oncological information system, for the sake of increasing the efficiency of training of doctors.

EMC IPR

The EMC Integrated Patient Record solution package allows medical institutions to use an information model centered on the patient's electronic medical history. Data sources, their format or location can be any.

The global scheme of the cancer information system can be represented as follows:



If you are moving to EPR, or want to get the most out of an already used system, EMC Integrated Patient Record will make it possible to more effectively use existing patient data through aggregation, sharing and optimal form of submission. And this, in turn, entails an increase in the efficiency of the entire medical institution and a reduction in costs.