The concept of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing was long since demolished by Google.
Punch a couple of words into the search engine and you’re likely to get a couple of million entries and opinions on the subject of your choice.
When the subject is cancer, that can be a problem.
Suddenly a lot of knowledge becomes a dangerous thing. How do you separate good information from bad? How do you interpret it? Who do you believe?
The Canadian Cancer Society and Cancer Care Ontario believe they have the answer.
They’re working together on the Diagnostic Assessment Program — Electronic Pathway Solution or DAP-EPS, for short — to provide what Luba Slatkovska calls “credible, trustable, empowering information . . . a good thing.”
Still in the early stages of development, DAP-EPS follows on from Cancer Care Ontario’s already successful province-wide Diagnostic Assessment Program, which helps co-ordinate a patient’s “diagnostic journey.”
The EPS add-on will give patients access to much of the information their GPs and specialists have. This is a far cry from a couple of decades ago when many doctors still believed that the details of a patient’s healthcare were really none of his or her business.
Patients can also make their information available to family and friends. But this isn’t like updating your Facebook status.
“It’s great that they can have access,” says Slatkovska, senior manager for research in the Canadian Cancer Society’s Ontario division. “Often patients might be scared to look at the results themselves or at least don’t want to do it alone.”
Garth Matheson, vice-president of planning and regional programs for Cancer Care Ontario, adds that cancer is “predominantly a disease of the aging. A patient of, say, 85 might never have turned on a computer. There are also patients who have loved ones in another province. So they have control of this. It’s empowering.”
And far better, Matheson and Slatkovska agree, than people “diagnosing themselves from Google.”
Says Slatkovska: “There’s an upcoming test for, say, lung cancer . . . you know nothing about it, what’s it for, what to expect
“Instead of Googling it, you’ll be able to find out from DAP-EPS what the test involves. Even if you’re not talking to your doctor about it, you can still have peace of mind.
“If you still want to find out more, to talk to someone, this tool will connect you to our Cancer Information Service, where you have professionals talking about cancer with information that is constantly updated by experts and isn’t going to scare you.”
Matheson points out that cancer really “is 200 different diseases. Cancer centres across the province are organized in a fashion allowing one-stop shopping… groups of specialists in one place and the least amount of pressure and anxiety as possible.”
DAP-EPS, he says, will add to this by providing two “portals,” one for the patient and one for the professionals.
“That portal gives the professional access to all the medical health records, lab tests, reports from radiologists, all the things that happen behind the scenes,” he says. “The other portal is an opportunity, if the patient chooses, to follow the same trajectory — visits, what’s next . . . access to a whole bunch of cancer information.”
The project, which took about a year and a half to build, is being introduced slowly, and tested painstakingly. Right now, it’s in use at Waterloo-Wellington Regional Cancer Program and Regional Cancer Care Northwest, in Thunder Bay, for lung and colorectal cancer patients.
The plan iss to add four more centres by the end of the year, says Matheson, “and after that, phase three will take us up to 13 centres in all. Then we’ll see how it’s going.
“If patients, caregivers and family physicians are using it, good. If they don’t seem to be, we’ll take a different approach. It’s a dynamic process. We’re always looking for new ways. We think this has great promise. But the jury’s still out.”
Slatkovska is reluctant to speculate on a date for full implementation of DAP-EPS. But she says that so far it’s been well-received.
“Sometimes you have to fight to get new things out there. But people are excited about this, so there’s already a high demand where it is. That’s going to push us forward.”
In Ontario, someone is diagnosed with cancer every eight minutes. Among the expected benefits of DAP-EPS are:
• Streamlined diagnostic scheduling and co-ordination of testing.
• Better communication between family doctors and specialists to speed up diagnosis.
• On-demand, on-line access to patient information.
• Access to clinical pathways that help obtain a complete diagnosis in one location.
• Patient access to the entire care team’s information in one place.
• Reducing duplication and system waste.
• Better management of waiting times.