Summary
ONCOassist is a revolutionary new CE-approved smartphone app developed specifically for oncology professionals. ONCOassist currently averages over 2,500 active users per month. The application contains all the decision support tools oncology professionals need at point-of-care, freeing them from the need to conduct time-consuming online searches. Tools include useful formulas, prognostic algorithms, adjuvant decision support tools similar to adjuvant online, AJCC staging content, CTCAE v4.0.
Challenge
Time is a major problem for oncology professionals, who waste time searching the internet to find safe, validated information to aid them with their decision-making. Current apps on the market that are aimed at oncology professionals are not validated and thus under MHRA regulations should not be used for patient care. Also, UK Trusts and healthcare institutions around the world spend a lot of time creating local chemotherapy protocols and guidelines to circulate to their staff. Unfortunately many of them go unused as they sit within the hospital intranet in PDF format.
Objectives
Our service aims to provide advice for clinicians who are concerned about the most appropriate dose to be administered to individual patients; often where the patient is treated outside standard chemotherapy regimens. Over a number of years we have carried out drug monitoring for patients treated at different UK centres for various clinical situations. We can therefore often offer advice based on the knowledge we have gained from similar clinical situations. It is often seen as beneficial to monitor individual patient drug exposures, to adjust the dose administered over several days. We provide this service free of charge.
The service runs in parallel with national clinical pharmacology trials led by Dr Gareth Veal in Newcastle. These involve centres across the UK conducting studies to learn more about the relationships between drug exposure and pharmacokinetics and key clinical parameters, including response and toxicity. A number of trials are now focused on these ‘hard to treat’ paediatric patient populations. The overall objectives are to determine appropriate drug exposures in all children with cancer, and for the data generated to provide evidence for change in terms of identifying and implementing more appropriate dosing regimens for particular subgroups of patients.
Back to the top