JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Pancreatic cancer is considered a complex cancer requiring specific expertise in diagnostic workup and multimodality treatment. Often multiple healthcare providers in different hospitals are involved during patient care. This fragmentation of care challenges healthcare providers in the network to deliver efficient, coherent and continuous network care.

Objective:

The aim of this study was to find means to improve network care for patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer by applying a human centered design methodology.

Methods:

A Human Centered Design (HCD) Sprint was conducted in July 2020. The sprint comprised five days with different goals: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test. Experts and stakeholders were approached from the pancreatic cancer network to contribute. Patients and next of kin were interviewed about their experiences of network care prior to the Sprint. By using HCD a goal was defined, various prototypes were explored and one prototype was tested.

Results:

The HCD Sprint led to a shared goal which was to deliver pancreatic cancer network care in a (virtual) hospital in which there is ‘one narrative’. This means that the patient’s context and preferences are always clear and taken into account, care is characterized by a short time to diagnosis and treatment and patient data is easily available for patients and involved clinicians. The accompanying prototypes were 1) Network agreements 2) Patient Itinerary 3) Transmural Trajectory Guidance and 4) Data sharing. For the latter, we developed and pilot-tested a real-time data sharing dashboard CONNECT. The first pilot-test was promising and provided feedback for further development.

Conclusions:

The HCD sprint resulted in several useful prototypes based on which a real-time data sharing dashboard (CONNECT) was developed and pilot tested. The next steps include further development of the dashboard, implementation in our network and long-term evaluation studies. Clinical Trial: not applicable