IT upgrade to enable real-time sharing of oncology data

eHealthNews.nz: AI & Analytics

IT upgrade to enable real-time sharing of oncology data

Monday, 22 May 2023

Share |

NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Aotearoa New Zealand’s Radiation Oncology Collection (ROC) is transitioning to a new IT infrastructure to enable real-time sharing of oncology data to support clinical decision-making at the point of care.

Updated information standards are being developed using SNOMED CT and FHIR, and a cloud-based infrastructure will support near real-time data exchange, as part of the national CanShare programme being led by Te Aho o Te Kahu, Cancer Control Agency.

Alex Dunn, kaiwhakahaere kaupapa senior project manager, Te Aho o Te Kahu, says New Zealand is a world-leader in its development of a comprehensive ROC that reports on treatment delivery by health region, patient demographics and service provider.

“ROC was originally set up to support improved and equitable access to radiation; harmonisation of treatment protocols, and resource planning for both workforce and machinery [linear accelerators]” he says.

You’ve read this article for free, but good journalism takes time and resource to produce. Please consider supporting eHealthNews by becoming a member of HiNZ, for just $17 a month.

“It holds data on almost every person receiving radiation therapy in New Zealand in the public or private sector. Radiation therapy requires highly structured and precise data, much of which is automatically captured by the software and machinery used to plan and deliver treatment, which lends itself well to the secondary use of these data for analytics and research”.

Dunn says the ROC, established in 2017, will help to improve access to radiation therapy by supporting business cases for linear accelerators in regional New Zealand, and demonstrating that there is sufficient patient demand to have machines operate at an efficient level in these locations.

He says that historically there has been regional variation in the uptake of new, more efficient or effective radiation techniques, which has contributed to geographic inequities. ROC is now used to track uptake of such techniques to support their use and nationally coordinated implementations.

“We have an agreed national data standard to define and count things like a ‘course of treatment’ and a ‘treatment session’, so we have consistent data coming in to help us understand variations in treatment practices and patient access” he explains.

“However, data are not readily shareable in real time to support care planning at time and point of care. This is where the planned upgrade to SNOMED CT and FHIR-based standards and supporting IT infrastructure come in.”

As part of this project, the CanShare team will provide SNOMED CT coding for the data specifications under development and will work with Oncology Information System business partners to implement SNOMED CT data standards into their products.

The team is also developing a FHIR implementation guide to allow real-time data sharing with other information systems, including in radiology, pathology, or chemotherapy.

Dunn says bringing ROC under the CanShare umbrella will help to reduce the data input burden for clinicians through auto-population of patient diagnosis, cancer staging, and other information from ‘upstream’ systems such as pathology labs.

Real-time data also opens the possibility for improved capacity management by supporting improved equipment utilisation.

“The ability to move patients around to where capacity is available could be a major strength of what we're looking to do,” he says.

“A secondary benefit of this more accurate, complete and timely data will be improvements in analytics and research.”