Health Informatics Research
The Health Informatics Research (HIR) team has extensive experience working in close collaboration with clinicians and scientists to develop innovative IT solutions to improve the quality of complex care and enable clinical research.
HIR has led the design, development and deployment of many local, national and international Health IT initiatives. These solutions include point-of-care outcomes collection, electronic clinical documentation, data workflow and integration, data modelling and health ontologies, patient reported outcome systems, and virtual care technologies.
On-going projects:
- CDI eOutcomes – Integration with Epic to collect outcomes at the point of care.
- eClaims – Integration portal to handle system therapy reimbursement.
- eCancerCare – Expansion of eCancerCare platform to Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) and Immune Effector Cell therapy (IEC)
- CDI Cancer Command – Development of data pipelines for Cancer Command dashboards
Links to other place for information of the program/team:
Major Accomplishments
The eCancerCare solution bridges the gap between clinical and research data collection. eCancerCare is a secure web-based platform that allows for collection of high quality research data at the point-of-care with components that enable electronic clinical documentation, dynamic diagram annotation, real-time data integration and disease specific patient timelines. eCancerCare has a robust clinical data model that uses international standards for data coding to allow for optimal interoperability. The systems is used by hundreds of users, including physicians, nurses, allied health professionals and researchers. Data collected in eCancerCare has contributed to over 100 research projects.
”WATChmAN” which stands for Web-based virtual Testicular CANcer clinic, is a secure, online solution that enables asynchronous virtual cancer follow-up for testicular cancer patients. We worked closely with Dr. Rob Hamilton to design and develop both the patient and clinician facing applications that facilitate asynchronous communication of the required lab and imaging tests for the virtual clinic. WATChmAN won The 2019 TD Ready Challenge: Reshaping the future of healthcare, and we continue to work with Dr. Robert Hamilton on advancing the model for asynchronous virtual cancer care. Read more about WATChmAN: A randomized trial of virtual surveillance versus standard in-person care for clinical stage I testicular cancer.
Our team has worked closely with Dr. Jennifer Jones, Director of the Cancer Rehabilitation and Survivorship Program over the last 10 years to advance cancer survivorship with the use of digital solutions. We started by developing an electronic suvivorship care plan solution that integrates diagnosis and treatment data to deliver personalized care plans to patients in active follow-up.
The successful pilot project has expanded into a national evaluation trial at other cancer centres in Canada, where Techna led the customization and deployment of the platform at each participating cancer centre.
We continue to work with Dr. Jones on developing the Reach App, an innovative electronic prospective surveillance and decision support system for cancer rehabilitation.
The Virtual Care Managmeent System (VCMS) is a secure digital solution to facilitate the widespread adoption of virtual care during the COVID-19 pandemic at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. Our team worked closely with Dr. Alejandro Berlin and the Smart Cancer Care team to rapidly develop VCMS, providing an easy to use digital platform to safely manage the data flow and communication between the care team. VCMS leverages core Techna technologies that enable data integration and site specific customizations. There are over 700 users that have used VCMS to manage over 50,000 patients, providing safe and timely virtual care to cancer patients. Read more about how VCMS contributed to Implementation and Outcomes of Virtual Care Across a Tertiary Cancer Center During COVID-19.
An innovation for Continuing Professional Development in collaboration with Dr. Peter Slinger and Dr. David Wiljer.
The CPD by the Minute platform provides registered trainees and staff a short knowledge assessment comprising of expert questions that are delivered through a Progressive Web Application (PWA).
Each question must be answered within a 60 second time limit, includes a measure of confidence and relevance, and provides content references.
HIR developed a scalable platform to customize and manage question content, with a flexible delivery approach to support different cohorts.
The HIR team at Techna has been at the forefront in leading the technical development of several national and international data initiatives.
We have designed, developed and continue to support CKCis, a national registry intended to support the development of clinical and basic research in kidney cancer across Canada. CKCis currently is collects data from 15 sites across Canada, with over 15,000 unique patients, and has contributed to over 30 research publications.
The Canadian Myeloma Research Group Database, was developed in collaboration with the clinicians, researchers and patients to collect real world data on myeloma patients. Just a few years after the database launched, it is now one of the largest and most comprehensive databases of myeloma patients in the world, with data on over 8000 patients across 17 sites in Canada.
The HIR team has played a pivotal role in support of the multi-site PRO-ACTIVE trial in collaboration with Dr. Rosemary Martino and Dr. Kate Hutchenson. Techna was able to architect a novel solution that collects and integrates clinical data, patient report outcomes and imaging. Allowing multi-disciplinary teams to manage the study data across multiple institutions in the US and Canada.