Imaging saves healthcare providers money - and can save lives. Whether it's pulling up an X-ray on a high-resolution monitor or conducting research into cancer treatments, making the right product decision is vital.
More than 1.2 million Americans are diagnosed with cancer every year. Imaging is helping investigators develop new and effective methods of treating this disease.
The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center (OSUCCC) in Columbus, Ohio is using Cardiff's (San Marcos, CA 760-752-5200) TELEform to help manage their patient records. They see more than 2,500 new cancer patients each year.
It's well known that certain types of cancer do not respond to conventional therapies. In these instances doctors often recommend that patients participate in a clinical trial to evaluate promising new treatments. About 200 OSUCCC patients take part in these trials each year.
"The problem is determining which study is appropriate for the patient," says Dr. Donn Young, director of the Biostatistics Unit. "CanSearch, a fax-based software system using Cardiff's TELEform software, was created to make these matches."
"Before any study starts, a ýprotocol' or formal document defining the experimental plan is completed. At OSUCCC we administer over 200 protocols, each 40 to 50 pages in length."
Physicians often find the volume of information overwhelming. TELEform, a fully integrated, automated data entry system accelerates this process and takes the administrative burden off doctors and their staff. This gives doctors more time to treat patients.
The major problem system developers face is creating easy to use systems. Doctors are not computer experts and they don't want to spend a lot of time learning programs -- especially when the systems they're now using appear to be working. To help keep programs simple, companies like Cardiff often turn to system integrators. In this case, Nistar Datasystems (University Heights, OH 216-321-2677) was called in.
"The first step in the process was to design the eligibility form," says Peter Goldstein, Nistar's president. "Our goal was to simplify the matching process. We wanted to make it easier for the doctor to see which studies were applicable. TELEform did what we wanted it to do. It really speeds up the process."
The form was designed using TELEform Designer, an integrated form builder. The resulting form uses a combination of alpha/numeric constrained fields and shaded bubbles. It is incredibly accurate.
"The bubble fields are read with 99% accuracy," says Goldstein. "The OCR\ICR accuracy is so high OSUCCC decided to skip the normal verification process entirely. This reduces turnaround time."
The system is being used for more than a dozen other studies including CanSearch, the process that helps doctors locate the best program for each individual patient. With CanSearch, the physician completes a patient eligibility study and faxes it back to OSUCCC. TELEform then automatically identifies, interprets and exports the information into a FoxPro database.
Once the export is complete, a search is run to match patient disease characteristics to appropriate studies. A report of matching studies is then compiled and automatically faxed back to the person making the request. This takes less than three minutes.
TELEform is used for most of the OSUCCC's other data collection processes because it's faster and cheaper than a data entry person. There are fewer errors. "I was the first to use TELEform," says Young. "Three other departments are now using it. Everybody is saying ýwe've got to have it!'. Everybody using it loves it."
