In an effort to establish a more robust framework for digital healthcare in the cancer care space, the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, is laying down $23 million to four organizations to fund research efforts. The funding aims better to understand telehealth operations in an ever-increasingly digital landscape to provide broader healthcare access to those who may have a harder time getting face-to-face treatment.
Refining Digital Healthcare Platforms to Better Serve the Public
Telehealth is a new form of remote healthcare that uses modern communication technologies like phone, video chat, email, and text message to assist patient care. While rudimentary forms have existed since the advent of the telephone, within the last 10 to 15 years, the field has evolved rapidly to leverage electronic healthcare’s potential for communities worldwide.
In 2005, the World Health Organization encouraged member states to create long-term strategic plans to implement telehealth operations worldwide. In the following years, telehealth development slowly took a form of its own but mostly lay dormant in the background of traditional face-to-face healthcare. Conventional forms continued to dominate healthcare administration until the COVID-19 pandemic struck, facilitating the need to limit travel and contact with others, forcing telehealth to the forefront of healthcare delivery.
Now, a few years after the onset of the pandemic, electronic healthcare is evolving as rapidly as ever as the communication industry has blossomed into a beast of its own to aid in correspondence for business, social, and healthcare purposes. Even though it has come a long way, electronic healthcare still has room for improvement to assist better those who could benefit from it most.
Overcoming Issues Facing Modern Electronic Healthcare
Although, in theory, digital healthcare could provide easier access to individuals living in rural and lower socioeconomic areas, recent studies show that the opposite is occurring. A study from researchers at Flatiron Science showed that for patients receiving cancer care through electronic means, white individuals were more likely to receive care, patients without health insurance were less likely to receive care, and patients living in the lowest socioeconomic status areas were much less likely to receive digital healthcare compared to those living in the highest socioeconomic status areas.
So, despite access to the internet and the other means necessary to receive electronic healthcare, common inequities in the traditional healthcare system are still present in a modernized digital healthcare system. To better understand these issues, the NIH is distributing a portion of the $23 million to The Telehealth Research and Innovation for Veterans with Cancer (THRIVE) Telehealth Research Center led by New York University Grossman School of Medicine. THRIVE intends to use the resources to examine how social factors like race, socioeconomic status, and rural residence affect access to electronic healthcare.
In addition to the inequities digital healthcare presents, another issue is standardizing practices in telehealth. Just like traditional healthcare, problems like privacy and quality of care are important aspects of building a sufficient framework for telemedicine. Recently, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) released its recommendations for standards and practices when developing electronic healthcare delivery systems. Published in July last year, the report is thorough but certainly subject to change as the landscape surrounding digital healthcare evolves so rapidly.
Other Areas of Funding for NIH’s Telehealth Initiative
While the core foundations of establishing effective digital healthcare systems are a massive undertaking in their own right, the NIH is also providing funding to focus on more concentrated areas within cancer care. These areas include reducing risk behaviors, shared decision-making for cancer screening and testing, and the effectiveness of monitoring systems.
The NIH will provide funding to the Scalable Telehealth Cancer Care (STELLAR) Center at Northwestern University to use telehealth strategies to reduce risk behaviors in cancer survivors. Risk behaviors include smoking and physical inactivity.
The University of Pennsylvania Telehealth Research Center of Excellence (Penn TRACE) will receive a portion of funding to compare the effectiveness of different electronic healthcare strategies on shared decision-making in lung cancer screening. Penn TRACE will also work to improve timely access to comprehensive testing for advanced lung cancer through digital means.
To better understand patient monitoring through electronic healthcare, the NIH is providing funds to the Making Telehealth Delivery of Cancer Care at Home Effective and Safe (MATCHES) Telehealth Research Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK). The organization will examine the effectiveness of its proprietary system, MSK@Home, to monitor patients receiving systemic treatments for prostate and breast cancer.
Telehealth is a rapidly evolving field that, once perhaps viewed as a quirky byproduct of technological development, now has the potential to be a core means of healthcare delivery to millions of people who may not otherwise receive the care they need. The $23 million from the NIH will provide funds to four cancer treatment centers to better understand and develop more effective frameworks for digital healthcare administration to bring in a new generation of healthcare, remote and accessible to many.
