Innovations Horizons in partnership with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center is undertaking a project to improve health communications. The project, titled ” A Prototype Solution to Facilitate Patient Navigation in Support of Pancreatic Cancer Care” had its official launch yesterday 🎉!

A description of the project is as follows: GMG ArcData will create a mobile-based application to improve communications and data exchange among patients and navigators involved in new pancreas surgery oncology episodes of care. Functionality will align with care processes using smartphone and the EHR patient portal. We will apply user-centered design theory and behavioral psychology approaches to co-design, develop, and test usability of features that optimize patient navigators-patient encounters on scheduling issues, nutrition guidance, pain management, wellbeing assessments, and activity tracking. Evaluation endpoints will reflect how the application improves the efficiency of workflows and lessens cognitive burden. We will assess how patients and navigators perceive the tool’s ability to provide more control and easier access to information about surgical care. The key project innovations are based on Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR)-based engineering standards that enable interoperability among digital health platforms, apply ‘recommender’ functions based on similar patients’ experiences, and exploit microeducation tools to enhance patient understanding about their surgical care. We have partnered with MedStar Health and Georgetown University Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center to co-design the software and access patients for usability testing. Successful implementation will lead to exploring a joint venture for scaling to other care episodes, expanded functionality, and co-creating business models for commercialization.

Many thanks to everyone working on this project Michael Y. and Gunjan V. of GMG ArcDataDean Hovey, Dr. Emily Winslow, and Dr. Keith Unger of the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer CenterKelly LazarusEric VicentiLiza Greenberg, Paula K., Lisa Green and Claudia Schur of L&M Policy Research, LLC, and Dr. Kevin Maloy, MD of the MedStar Health Institute for Innovation.

More information can be found at: https://projectreporter.nih.gov/project_info_description.cfm?aid=10275854&icde=52030016

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