LEBANON — Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center is part of a $9 million funding grant to research new ways to improve cancer care.
The grant, coming through the National Cancer Institute and in association with the Beau Biden Cancer Moonshot Initiative, is funding a total of six research centers throughout the United States, including Dartmouth-Hitchcock.
The research at Dartmouth-Hitchcock is looking at ways for cancer surgeons to work with patients to improve their outcomes after surgery and decrease time in the hospital.
“Post-operative symptom management is an underutilized strategy for improving surgical care,” Dartmouth-Hitchcock Chair of Surgery Sandra Wong said. “This work will help us understand how surgeons should implement (patient-reported outcomes) especially for patients who travel great distances for their operations.”
Dartmouth-Hitchcock is joined in the grant by the Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center in Boston, Baptist Memorial Medical Center in Memphis, Lifespan Cancer Institute in Rhode Island, West Virginia University Cancer Institute, and Maine Medical Center in Portland, Maine.
Norris Cotton Cancer Care Center Director Dr. Steven Leach said, “As the only NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center located outside of a major urban center, NCCC can play a leading role in delivering care to rural populations.”
The grant-funded consortium of six hospitals, called SIMPRO under the grant, will develop, implement, and evaluate an electronic reporting, or ePRO. Patients and their doctors will be able to communicate through an app, called eSyM, on their smart devices. The app will enable a secure connection to their cancer care team via the electronic health record, and facilitate symptom tracking after cancer surgery or chemotherapy.
The study will test whether monitoring the symptoms patients experience and providing coaching on how to manage them can decrease the need for hospitalizations and emergency room visits.
After development and pilot testing, eSyM will be fully integrated into the electronic health record at each participating center, allowing for direct communication and real-time updates for clinicians who will have access to a dashboard of patients’ symptoms to prioritize outreach efforts and coaching.
