Currently submitted to: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Jul 16, 2026
Open Peer Review Period: Jul 17, 2026 - Sep 11, 2026
(currently open for review)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
A scoping review of dashboards to measure and improve quality of care in oncology
ABSTRACT
Background:
Quality dashboards are increasingly being used in oncology to support monitoring and standardisation of quality of care against defined benchmarks, yet there is limited consensus or guidelines on effective dashboard design.
Objective:
This scoping review aims to summarise the evidence supporting the use of quality dashboards in improving cancer care and to identify key design features to inform future development.
Methods:
A comprehensive literature search of MEDLINE (PubMed) and EMBASE (Ovid) was conducted on June 12, 2026, using keywords including “performance,” “cancer,” “quality,” and “dashboard.” Reference lists of included studies were screened, and updates to previously published studies were searched to identify additional relevant articles. Eligible studies were full-text English-language publications involving adult patients undergoing work-up, treatment, or follow-up for solid organ malignancies in the outpatient setting that described the design and utilisation of digital dashboards capturing data on quality indicators.
Results:
Of 181 abstracts retrieved, 16 met inclusion criteria. An additional 18 papers were identified through reference list screening and searches for updated publications, resulting in 34 included studies. Across a range of cancer types, there was marked heterogeneity in the quality indicators, outcome measures, and reporting frequency. Despite this, there is evidence that implementing quality dashboards can improve cancer care processes, outcomes, and adherence to best practice guidelines. However, notable underexplored areas include the impact on recurrent disease management, end-of-life care, and survival outcomes. Effective design features include a single overview page with more information provided on click-through, colour coding to indicate performance levels, and funnel plots to identify outliers.
Conclusions:
Quality dashboards can improve guideline-recommended care processes across various stages of cancer care, with considerable scope for improvement, including through standardisation. Further research is needed to assess their impact in underexplored but clinically important areas, such as recurrent disease or end-of-life care settings. Clinical Trial: N/A
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