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Welcome to the July issue of the Clinical Research Connection. We value the partnership we have with our affiliate network and hope this newsletter will provide an opportunity for enhanced communication and interaction, and advance our collective strength in the area of oncology research.
Please send your feedback and suggestions to Vera Jackson at affiliates@northwestern.edu.
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According to Lyle Berkowitz, MD, an internist with Northwestern Memorial Physicians Group (NMPG), a diagnosis of cancer marks "an inflection point in healthcare," that triggers a series of complex and potentially confusing actions. Berkowitz recognized the need to provide guidance to patients and their physicians at these points, and turned to a combination of process and technology built upon the Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG) Patient Study Calendar (PSC), an open-source, standards-based software application intended for use by organizations to centrally and consistently manage study participant schedules in clinical trials. "We recognized that PSC could be easily modified to do exactly what we needed," says Warren Kibbe, PhD, Director of Bioinformatics at the Lurie Cancer Center, who led the development effort.
"Most primary care physicians do not deliver a diagnosis of cancer very frequently,"
explains Berkowitz. "They may not be current on the protocol for workup or exactly what the patient should do next." Berkowitz led a research effort under the auspices of
the Szollosi Healthcare Innovation Program (SHIP), a nonprofit organization he
founded and directs.
Dr. Berkowitz and his colleagues at the Lurie Cancer Center created a five-step checklist to provide the formal guidance, but he also recognized that if the list could be translated into a technology tool, it would be simpler for physicians to use and acceptance would be higher. When Kibbe learned more about the functional requirements for this tool, he realized that a foundation was already available in the caBIG® Patient Study
Calendar (PSC), a tool to help patients and their care providers follow the protocols while on a clinical trial.
Kibbe also recognized that if the checklist could be translated into a technology tool, it could provide a much simpler workflow for physicians to use, resulting in a higher rate of acceptance. As he learned more about the functional requirements sought from this tool, Kibbe realized that a solid technology foundation was already available in the caBIG® Patient Study Calendar (PSC).
The modified PSC (called iNav), now in place at Northwestern University, leverages existing resources to help physicians communicate important information to their patients, consistently and easily. This powerful combination of process, technology, and personnel is the pilot for a Northwestern comprehensive Patient Navigator Program which is currently being used with patients initially seen at NMPG.
iNav is now freely accessible to the global bioinformatics community under an MIT Open Source license. The full code base may be found online at http://github.com/mgurley/inav. Questions may be directed to Mike Gurley at m-gurley@northwestern.edu, Sean Whitaker at s-whitaker@northwestern.edu, or Warren Kibbe at wakibbe@northwestern.edu.
To learn more about iNav, click here
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