Minimal Common Oncology Data Elements Genomics Pilot Project: Enhancing Oncology Research Through Electronic Health Record Interoperability at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

PURPOSE: The expanding presence of the electronic health record (EHR) underscores the necessity for improved interoperability. To test the interoperability within the field of oncology research, our team at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) enabled our Epic-based EHR to be compatible with the Minimal Common Oncology Data Elements (mCODE), which is a Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR)-based consensus data standard created to facilitate the transmission of EHRs for patients with cancer. METHODS: Our approach used an extract, transform, load tool for converting EHR data from the VUMC Epic Clarity database into mCODE-compatible profiles. We established a sandbox environment on Microsoft Azure for data migration, deployed a FHIR server to handle application programming interface (API) requests, and mapped VUMC data to align with mCODE structures. In addition, we constructed a web application to demonstrate the practical use of mCODE profiles in health care. RESULTS: We developed an end-to-end pipeline that converted EHR data into mCODE-compliant profiles, as well as a web application that visualizes genomic data and provides cancer risk assessments. Despite the complexities of aligning traditional EHR databases with mCODE standards and the limitations of FHIR APIs in supporting advanced statistical methodologies, this project successfully demonstrates the practical integration of mCODE standards into existing health care infrastructures. CONCLUSION: This study provides a proof of concept for the interoperability of mCODE within a major health care institution's EHR system, highlighting both the potential and the current limitations of FHIR APIs in supporting complex data analysis for oncology research.

Oncologist-Reported Barriers and Facilitators to Offering Cancer Clinical Trials to Their Patients.

NCCN guidelines indicate that cancer clinical trials (CCTs) are the best management for patients with cancer. However, only 5% of patients enroll in them. We examined oncologists' perceived barriers and facilitators to discussing CCTs. This qualitative study was part of the ASCO-ACCC Initiative to Increase Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Clinical Trials. Barriers and facilitators at the system, trial, provider, and patient levels were examined. To achieve triangulation, patient encounters were reviewed using chart-stimulated recall (CSR) methods, thereby obtaining a valid assessment of physician performance. Ten oncology providers participated in this study. Nine were oncologists, and one was a clinical research coordinator; five were female; four were White; three were Asian; and three were Black. Barriers to offering CCTs were a lack of trial availability; ineligibility; a lack of knowledge; assumptions about patient interest, benefits, or harms; patient's disease factors; and negative attitudes. Facilitators of offering CCTs were a physical space to discuss trials; greater trial availability; a systematic approach to offering trials; patient factors; patients seeking trials; a lack of comorbidities; patients being younger in age; patients being aware of, asking about, or hearing of trials from their surgeon; and higher levels of altruism. Many of the cited barriers are addressable with the cited facilitators. A larger study is needed to generalize and validate these findings.

Oncologists' Satisfaction with Virtual Care: A Questionnaire.

INTRODUCTION: Although virtual care (VC) has become an integral part of oncology care and healthcare delivery, clinicians' perspectives on and satisfaction with this modality are not well understood. METHODS: Using a National Network Forum framework and expert panel review, we developed a questionnaire to measure oncologists' satisfaction with VC. The questionnaire was distributed to Canadian oncologists through medical society email lists (n = 1541). We used a 5-point Likert scale to capture their responses, which included strongly disagree (1), disagree (2), undecided (3), agree (4), and strongly agree (5). RESULTS: A total of 61 oncologists and/or oncology trainees, of 768 (7.9%) who opened their email, completed questionnaires between October 2022 and January 2023. Every questionnaire item had a response rate greater than 98%. Seventy-two percent of the respondents were satisfied with VC. Oncologists who were less comfortable with technology were more likely to report lower levels of satisfaction (p < 0.001, Wilcoxon rank-sum). The questionnaire items that received the highest levels of agreement were related to VC reducing costs and improving access for patients and concerns about missing a diagnosis and assessing patients' functional status. The questionnaire items that received the greatest disagreement were related to VC improving access for patients with language barriers, VC being associated with time-savings for clinicians, improvements in clinical efficacy, and more readily available lab tests. CONCLUSIONS: Most of the oncologists surveyed are satisfied with VC; however, there are some concerns with VC that need to be addressed. Future research on optimizing VC should address clinicians' concerns, in addition to addressing the patient experience.

Challenges and perspectives in use of artificial intelligence to support treatment recommendations in clinical oncology.

Artificial intelligence (AI) promises to be the next revolutionary step in modern society. Yet, its role in all fields of industry and science need to be determined. One very promising field is represented by AI-based decision-making tools in clinical oncology leading to more comprehensive, personalized therapy approaches. In this review, the authors provide an overview on all relevant technical applications of AI in oncology, which are required to understand the future challenges and realistic perspectives for decision-making tools. In recent years, various applications of AI in medicine have been developed focusing on the analysis of radiological and pathological images. AI applications encompass large amounts of complex data supporting clinical decision-making and reducing errors by objectively quantifying all aspects of the data collected. In clinical oncology, almost all patients receive a treatment recommendation in a multidisciplinary cancer conference at the beginning and during their treatment periods. These highly complex decisions are based on a large amount of information (of the patients and of the various treatment options), which need to be analyzed and correctly classified in a short time. In this review, the authors describe the technical and medical requirements of AI to address these scientific challenges in a multidisciplinary manner. Major challenges in the use of AI in oncology and decision-making tools are data security, data representation, and explainability of AI-based outcome predictions, in particular for decision-making processes in multidisciplinary cancer conferences. Finally, limitations and potential solutions are described and compared for current and future research attempts.

Transforming patient-centered cancer care using telehealth: the MATCHES Center.

Modern cancer care is costly and logistically burdensome for patients and their families despite an expansion of technology and medical advances that create the opportunity for novel approaches to care. Therefore, there is a growing appreciation for the need to leverage these innovations to make cancer care more patient centered and convenient. The Memorial Sloan Kettering Making Telehealth Delivery of Cancer Care at Home Efficient and Safe Telehealth Research Center is a National Cancer Institute-designated and funded Telehealth Research Center of Excellence poised to generate the evidence necessary to inform the appropriate use of telehealth as a strategy to improve access to cancer services that are convenient for patients. The center will evaluate telehealth as a strategy to personalize cancer care delivery to ensure that it is not only safe and effective but also convenient and efficient. In this article, we outline this new center's research strategy, as well as highlight challenges that exist in further integrating telehealth into standard oncology practice based on early experiences.

"A very difficult conversation": Challenges and opportunities for improvement in pediatric oncology clinician communication about late effects.

OBJECTIVES: Current approaches to communicating the potential late effects of pediatric oncology treatments leave many patients and families feeling unaware of risks and unprepared for the future. We aimed to identify provider perspectives on early communication about late effects. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with pediatric oncology providers at Dana-Farber/Boston Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center from December 2021 to March 2022. Purposeful sampling ensured a diversity of clinical roles. Thematic analysis was conducted using deductive and inductive codes. RESULTS: We interviewed nine pediatric oncology providers; all expressed discomfort discussing potential late effects in early treatment conversations. Barriers to late effects communication included (i) social-emotional factors, including lack of perceived importance to families, worry about emotional burden on families, and provider feelings of helplessness/wanting to provide hope; and (ii) suboptimal set-up/resources, including limitations of consent forms, time constraints, and lack of available data. All providers supported the creation of a communication tool to assist early discussions of late effects. CONCLUSIONS: Communicating about late effect risks poses unique challenges to providers because of the perceived impact on families and the limitations of current practices and available resources. These findings support the need for a late effects communication tool to assist in early communication about late effects risks.

The oncology ribbon of reflection: a novel tool to encourage trainee self-reflection.

The field of oncology presents a number of emotionally challenging situations for a trainee to navigate which might not have been previously encountered in training. With the assistance of a guide, reflecting on such situations can be helpful; however, no tool exists in the literature specifically for clinical oncology situations and tailored to provide trainees guidance through the reflective process. Consequently, we present a self-guided reflection tool design using four established reflection models and improved over three iterations of feedback.

Le domaine de l'oncologie présente un certain nombre de situations émotionnellement difficiles à gérer pour un stagiaire qui n'a peut-être jamais été confronté à de telles situations au cours de sa formation. Avec l'aide d'un guide, il peut être utile de réfléchir à ces situations. Cependant, il n'existe pas dans la littérature d'outil adapté aux situations cliniques en oncologie et conçu pour guider les stagiaires tout au long du processus de réflexion. Par conséquent, nous présentons un outil d'autoréflexion conçu à partir de quatre modèles de réflexion établis et amélioré au cours de trois rondes de rétroaction.

Improving Quality and Cost of the Oncology Advanced Practice Provider Chemotherapy Privileging Process.

BACKGROUND: Managing antineoplastic orders, side effects, and symptoms is a primary role of oncology advanced practice providers (APPs). Antineoplastic management (ANM) is complex because of risk of medication errors, narrow therapeutic range of agents, frequent dose adjustments, and multiple drug regimens. OBJECTIVES: This article describes an academic institution's review of current practice for ANM privileging and employing Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles to develop a revised process relevant to APP practice, addressing efficiency, accessibility, and cost-effectiveness. METHODS: Using consecutive PDSA cycles, the team revised the didactic portion of the ANM privileging process and collaborated with nurses, pharmacists, and physicians for mentoring expertise. FINDINGS: The revised process resulted in increased relevance of ANM didactic content while requiring 75% less time to complete. To date, all ANM-privileged APPs at the institution (N = 49) have completed the revised ANM privileging process, with a 100% pass rate on the competency assessment.

TMO-Net: an explainable pretrained multi-omics model for multi-task learning in oncology.

Cancer is a complex disease composing systemic alterations in multiple scales. In this study, we develop the Tumor Multi-Omics pre-trained Network (TMO-Net) that integrates multi-omics pan-cancer datasets for model pre-training, facilitating cross-omics interactions and enabling joint representation learning and incomplete omics inference. This model enhances multi-omics sample representation and empowers various downstream oncology tasks with incomplete multi-omics datasets. By employing interpretable learning, we characterize the contributions of distinct omics features to clinical outcomes. The TMO-Net model serves as a versatile framework for cross-modal multi-omics learning in oncology, paving the way for tumor omics-specific foundation models.

LIUBOV HEORHIIVNA BUCHYNSKA.

Director of the R.E. Kavetsky Institute of Experimental Pathology, Oncology and Radiobiology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Doctor of Biological Sciences Professor Liubov Heorhiivna Buchynska celebrates her 75th anniversary   Liubov Heorhiivna Buchynska graduated from the Biological Department of the Taras Shevchenko State University in 1977 and has been working at the R.E. Kavetsky Institute of Experimental Pathology, Oncology and Radiobiology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine since 1977. In 1996, she became the Scientific Secretary of the Institute, in 2001 - the Deputy Director, and in 2021 - Director of the Institute. In 1989, L. Buchynska  received her PhD degree and in 2012,  she defended her doctoral thesis "Endometrioid cancer: taxonomy of genetic alterations of cancer cells and their role in determining malignancy potential" and received her doctoral degree in specialty "oncology". Since 2003, she has headed the Laboratory of Oncogenetics (nowadays - the Department of Genetics of Cancer and Oncohematology). In 2020, L. Buchynska was given the title of Professor in Biology.  Prof. L. Buchynska is a well-known Ukrainian scientist in the field of oncogenetics and cytomorphology. Her long-term studies are characterized by a multidisciplinary approach to solving the problems of cancer biology and genetics. The innovation component occupies an important place in the fundamental studies by Prof. L. Buchynska aimed at implementing technologies for early and differential diagnosis of the precancerous and cancerous processes and assessing  the course of the disease in patients with malignancies of the organs of the female reproductive system. Prof. L. Buchynska has authored more than 250 scientific papers and 7 patents of Ukraine. She is a co-author of three monographs. She pays special attention to research-and-organizational and educational activities and training of young researchers. She has supervised five PhD theses. For the last 10 years, she has been collaborating with the Bogomolets National Medical University lecturing biology.  Prof. L. Buchynska is the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the "Experimental Oncology" and "Oncology" journals, a member of the Scientific Council on the Problems of Malignant Neoplasms, a member of the Board of the National Association of Ukrainian Oncologists and the Non-governmental Organization "Ukrainian Society for Cancer Research". Prof. L. Buchynska was awarded the Bogomolets Prize of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and a Certificate of Merit of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. She was decorated with the Medal of Honor of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine "For Scientific Achievements". Holding the helm of the Institute in difficult times for our country, Liubov Heorhiivna is doing her best for a noble goal - fighting cancer. The administration and staff of the Institute have a great pleasure to congratulate Liubov Heorhiivna on her 75th anniversary and wish her good health, creative inspiration, and new scientific achievements.   Administration and staff of the R.E. Kavetsky Institute of Experimental Pathology, Oncology and Radiobiology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Editorial Board of Experimental Oncology.

Unlocking the Next Frontier in Precision Oncology: Addressing Drug-Tolerant Residual Disease.

SUMMARY: Drug-tolerant residual disease (DTRD) after the initial maximal response to a systemic therapy can serve as a tumor reservoir for the development of acquired drug resistance and represents a major clinical challenge across various cancers and types of therapies. To unlock the next frontier in precision oncology, we propose a fundamental paradigm shift in the treatment of metastatic cancers with a sharpened focus towards defining, monitoring, and therapeutically targeting the DTRD state.

Study protocol OKRA: orientation compass for the preparing, delivering and following up on breaking bad news conversations in paediatric oncology.

INTRODUCTION: In paediatric oncology, 'breaking bad news'-BBN-like cancer diagnosis is perceived as particularly challenging. Enabling a trialogue between children with their relatives and health professionals requires profound communication skills. Lacking the skills, experience or adequate support tools might result in negative consequences for both paediatric oncologists as BBN transmitters and BBN receivers as children with cancer and their relatives.In contrast to oncology for adults, multiperspective studies that explore BBN experience and specific support needs are rare, especially in Germany. Systematically developed and practically piloted support instruments, which address the specific needs of paediatric oncology, are missing. OBJECTIVE: To systematically design and mature in practice an orientation compass for preparing, delivering and following up on BBN conversations in paediatric oncology-so-called Orientierungskompass zur Übermittlung schwerwiegender Nachrichten in der Kinderonkologie (OKRA). METHODS AND ANALYSIS: OKRA is based on a QUAL-quant mixed study design, comprising two phases. Four groups will contribute (1) experts through personal experience (representatives for children receiving BBN and their parents), (2) medical care providers and representatives of national medical societies, (3) ambulant psychosocial/psychological support providers and (4) researchers. In phase 1, multiperspective knowledge is generated through a participatory group Delphi that involves in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and questionnaires. This process culminates in formulating theses for a high-quality BBN process (output phase 1). In phase 2, based on the theses, a pilot orientation compass is designed. Through iterative cycles with the participatory action research method, this instrument will be piloted in three paediatric oncological settings and consequently optimised. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: OKRA was approved on 19 September 2023 by the ethics committee of the Medical Faculty of the University of Cologne (No. 23-1187). After project completion, the OKRA compass will be distributed to multidisciplinary paediatric oncology teams throughout Germany. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: DRKS00031691.

Themis: advancing precision oncology through comprehensive molecular subtyping and optimization.

Recent advances in tumor molecular subtyping have revolutionized precision oncology, offering novel avenues for patient-specific treatment strategies. However, a comprehensive and independent comparison of these subtyping methodologies remains unexplored. This study introduces 'Themis' (Tumor HEterogeneity analysis on Molecular subtypIng System), an evaluation platform that encapsulates a few representative tumor molecular subtyping methods, including Stemness, Anoikis, Metabolism, and pathway-based classifications, utilizing 38 test datasets curated from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and significant studies. Our self-designed quantitative analysis uncovers the relative strengths, limitations, and applicability of each method in different clinical contexts. Crucially, Themis serves as a vital tool in identifying the most appropriate subtyping methods for specific clinical scenarios. It also guides fine-tuning existing subtyping methods to achieve more accurate phenotype-associated results. To demonstrate the practical utility, we apply Themis to a breast cancer dataset, showcasing its efficacy in selecting the most suitable subtyping methods for personalized medicine in various clinical scenarios. This study bridges a crucial gap in cancer research and lays a foundation for future advancements in individualized cancer therapy and patient management.

Patient care and access to clinical trials in gynaecological oncology: global implications of the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.

PURPOSE: Our prospective international survey evaluated the impact of the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic on the management gynaecological malignancies from the multidisciplinary physicians' perspective with particular focus on clinical infrastructures and trial participation. METHODS: Our survey consisted of 53 COVID-related questions. It was sent to healthcare professionals in gynaecological oncology centres across Europe and Pan-Arabian region via the study groups and gynaecological societies from April 2020 to October 2020. All healthcare professionals treating gynaecological cancers were able to participate in our survey. RESULTS: A total of 255 answers were collected from 30 countries. The majority (73%) of participants were gynaecological oncologists from university hospitals (71%) with at least an Intensive Care Unit with cardiopulmonary support available at their institutions. Most institutions continued to perform elective surgeries only for oncological cases (98%). Patients had to wait on average 2 weeks longer for their surgery appointments compared to previous years (range 0-12 weeks). Most cases that were prioritised for surgical intervention across all gynaecological tumours were early-stage disease (74%), primary situation (61%) and good ECOG status (63%). The radicality of surgery did not change in the majority of cases (78%) across all tumour types. During the pandemic, only 38% of clinicians stated they would start a new clinical trial. Almost half of the participants stated the pandemic negatively impacted the financial structure and support for clinical trials. Approximately 20% of clinicians did not feel well-informed regarding clinical algorithm for COVID-19 patients throughout the pandemic. Thirty percent stated that they are currently having trouble in providing adequate medical care due to staff shortage. CONCLUSION: Despite well-established guidelines, pandemic clearly affected clinical research and patientcare. Our survey underlines the necessity for building robust emergency algorithms tailored to gynaecological oncology to minimise negative impact in crises and to preserve access to clinical trials.

Perspectives from neuro-oncology providers on patient access to electronic records: a survey study.

Aim: To evaluate the neuro-oncology providers' experience with patient online access to electronic records. Methods: Cross-sectional survey for physicians and advanced care providers within the field of neuro-oncology in the USA. Results: 65 providers completed the survey, from all major regions of the USA. 58% reported that at least once per month, patients contacted them outside of an office visit about provider notes or a laboratory or imaging finding accessed online. 54% of providers did not think that all laboratory results should be released automatically, and only 25% of providers thought that all radiology reads should be released immediately. 97% thought that some patients suffered substantial distress viewing test results prior to appointments. Qualitative responses aligned with the quantitative results. Conclusion: Most neuro-oncology providers are concerned about the immediate release of laboratory and imaging findings to patients without guidance.

Prior studies had investigated the perspectives of medical providers on patients having immediate access to medical records. However, almost none of them focus on neuro-oncology. In our study, we distributed a survey electronically to neuro-oncology providers across the USA to seek their perspectives. Our results show that most neuro-oncology providers found patients having immediate access to their records to be useful. However, they raised concerns about the immediate release of laboratory and imaging findings to patients without guidance. Our study also included free responses from the neuro-oncology providers that could help mitigate this concern.