March 3, 2022
March 3, 2022
Six hospitals in the Central Netherlands have agreed to support the regional oncological multidisciplinary team meetings (Dutch: MDOs; English: MDTs) with a digital collaboration platform. In 2021, they started the Data Delen Midden-Nederland (DDMN) project, which focuses on the automated sharing of patient data across the region. The project’s objective is to improve the quality of care for all patients diagnosed with cancer in the region, increase clinical efficiency and improve user satisfaction. The cloud infrastructure is set to scale to other Dutch areas, linking to national infrastructure to support various types of MDOs for long-term conditions in the future.
In the central Netherlands, the need for multidisciplinary treatment recommendations for cancer patients is rapidly increasing. The clinical teams involved in the decision-making about their patients’ future care are highly overloaded as registering and scheduling patients, including preparing and administering the MDOs, is time-consuming and currently takes a great deal of manual work. In addition, exchanging patient data for the MDOs is being performed manually, often through copy-paste mechanism, overtyping, uploading, secure email or by making use of one’s medical image system or EMR.
Therefore, an efficient MDO digital support that puts a secure and automated exchange of patient data cross-hospitals at the centre of attention is highly required to help speed up the decision-making and support patients in getting the best treatment in the shortest time possible.
The Right Care at the Right Place requires the Right Information at the Right place
Against the backdrop of ‘The Right Care in the Right Place’ national Dutch programme, for which the right information in the right place is an essential precondition, six hospitals from the Oncomid network, namely UMC Utrecht, Meander Medical Center, St. Antonius Hospital, Tergooi, Rivierenland Hospital Tiel and Diakonessenhuis have agreed to support the regional oncology MDOs with a digital collaboration platform in the Central Netherlands (DDMN project).
Improving cancer outcomes across the region through an automated data exchange
DDMN focuses on enhancing the automated data exchange for patients referred to regional MDOs. There is a plan to:
- Improve the quality of care: Speed up the decision-making process and reduce duplicated patients, errors and rescheduling of patients referred to the MDO based on complete and up-to-date patient information in place
- Increase clinical and administrative efficiency: Minimise manual efforts and unnecessary workload for specialists and secretaries
- Improve user satisfaction: Automating processes to access data cross-organisations real-time and assure a seamless experience that releases valuable clinical time by decreasing administration
The regional and cloud ICT infrastructure is expected to reduce the administrative burden for healthcare professionals substantially. Additionally, it will lead to a better quality of care as the patient data is always available, and availability no longer depends on preliminary manual work. As a result, patients will be rescheduled less frequently, sharing patient information will become less error-prone, and significantly reduce the threshold for enrolling patients in MDOs. Finally, it will help minimise the duplication of diagnostics due to treatment in multiple hospitals by linking the patient data from various sources.
“The Vitaly platform integrated to the different hospital information systems is a great example of connected care in which IT facilitates multiple hospitals to cooperate proactively and safe in a single patient case with minimal administrative burdens. We’re looking forward to the results of this innovative project. Great to have Parsek in our ecosystem.”
Arjo Boendermaker, project lead Data Sharing Mid-Netherlands Region
A comprehensive ecosystem of IT partners supporting the implementation
The project includes a complete ecosystem of reliable partners in the digitalisation of regional oncology MDOs, which will support real-time data exchange from different health information systems, the highest level of security and various possibilities of integrations based on open standards.
The regional MDO collaboration platform in the Central Netherlands covered by Parsek’s Vitaly application, implemented by and transformed into Open Line’s MaaS-Service model (MDO as a Service) will simplify the logistics, information flow and coordination of multidisciplinary teams by supporting a variety of cross-collaboration touchpoints. Furthermore, it will be adjusted to fit the needs of any disease type, team size, time occurrence and other process-related demands.
The solution assures cross-institutional data exchange by integrating with Philips Enovation, Chipsoft, Epic, Hyland and EasyCare. The regional platform will be fully managed, supported and hosted in a secure Open Line cloud infrastructure in the Netherlands.
Key milestones and plans for the future
By June 2022, four oncology MDOs (urology, gynaecology, liver, colorectal cancer) will be implemented and supported by automated data exchange. The remaining four MDOs will be implemented by the end of Q1 2023. With the implemented solution it is expected that the hospitals involved will discuss more than 11000 patients each year.
Furthermore, the DDMN’s vision lies in implementing the right solution that can easily expand to support national MDOs for any disease (e.g., cancer, cardiovascular, gynaecology, pulmonary …) and link to national standards and healthcare information exchange initiatives, such as PGO or LSP and TWIIN. This way, it will help assure all patients in the country who require multidisciplinary expertise with equal access to the best clinicians and optimal care outcomes in the nearest future.