iCIMS Co-authored Paper presented at the Victorian Integrated Cancer Services (VICS) 3rd Conference

iCIMS Co-authored Paper Presented at Victorian Integrated Cancer Services (VICS) 3rd Conference

Professor Bruce Mann, Director of Breast Tumour Stream -Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre, presented a paper at the  Victorian Integrated Cancer Services (VICS) 3rd Conference titled: “Expanding the Value of Multi-Disciplinary Team Meetings – Data and Process Together is the Key”.

The paper was co-authored by Prof. Bruce Mann, Allan Park and Lisa Talbot from Melbourne Health and Ali Besiso, Vickie Ho and Prof. Jon Patrick from iCIMS.  The Abstract is below.

VICS 2017 Paper Abstract

Expanding the Value of Multi-Disciplinary Team Meetings – Data and Process Together is the Key.

The Multidisciplinary meeting (MDM) is a critical part of cancer patient management. Substantial time is spent preparing for the MDM, and IT support for MDMs is vital. Different cancers have different software requirements for the MDM and the requirements for any particular cancer may change with developments in clinical practice.

The MDM offers an excellent opportunity to collect an agreed dataset on all patients that can be used for a variety of clinical, quality assurance and research purposes. This potential is rarely realised due to challenges of data collection, presentation, and subsequent use. Complex requirements create significant challenges for analysis, design and development of working software.

In a pilot project between RMH & Women’s Breast Service and iCIMS, a Clinical and Research Information Management System was developed to specification of the Breast Service. It provides an electronic system where data are entered prior to, during, and after the MDM to populate the MDM presentation template, collect data that can be used for various aspects of the Breast model of care, and for research purposes. It is central to data submission to the Breast Quality Audit, the creation of Survivorship Care Plans with auto population of pathology and treatment details and an extensive research program.

On go-live, the system served basic MDM functions defined by the service, but as it was rolled out to further users and exposed to a wider VCCC breast tumour stream members, refinements were introduced into the design. In the first 3 months of live operations, 91 revisions were requested of which 75 were addressed in a mean time of 3 days, due to the “immediate adaptability” of the iCIMS technology.

This paper presents the work flow and various uses of the Clinical and Research data system, and demonstrates the changes, and the processes behind them, that have been implemented to refine its function.

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