As innovative nurses and other healthcare professionals create libraries of mobile apps and other technologies that allow patients and providers to communicate remotely about oral chemotherapy treatment, how can they be better used consistently across practices to achieve optimal patient outcomes?

“How are you doing?” We ask this question of our patients repeatedly: at diagnosis, during treatment, throughout survivorship, and at end of life. However, studies show that patients often give inaccurate answers to that direct question.

Prostate cancer is one of the most common cancers treated with radiotherapy (RT). Conventional RT for low-risk patients usually involves 40–45 treatments given over eight or nine weeks. Several studies suggest that hypofractionated RT—fewer treatments but with a higher dose per treatment—may produce a similar survival benefit. When two treatments have similar survival outcomes, the decision process looks at symptom profiles, quality of life, and cost.

Patients with lung cancer who also had mental health disorders saw improved cancer-related outcomes when their mental illness was treated, according to findings from a study published in JAMA Oncology.

Starting immunotherapy for bladder cancer shortly after initial treatment with chemotherapy is better than taking an extended break from cancer treatment, according to results from a study reported at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting.

Cancer clinical trials often collect patient-reported outcome (PRO) data, but the information is generally used just for that trial. Recognizing the value of making it available to healthcare providers everywhere, in July 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched Project Patient Voice, a pilot program designed to share clinical trial PROs on an easy-to-access website.

Facilitating the provision of patient-centered care is an ONS priority. But until recently, quality information from the patient’s perspective was limited. This kind of information is often unavailable, limited in its breadth, or solicited from patients too late in the healthcare process, making their experience less understandable than necessary. In response, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) Oncology Center of Excellence created a pilot program, called Project Patient Voice, that will make patient-reported symptoms from cancer trials available to the public.

Antioxidant supplements are associated with increased disease recurrence and statistically nonsignificant increased risk of mortality in patients with breast cancer who were receiving cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, and paclitaxel, according to findings from a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

The Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (CTCAE) is a list of adverse event (AE) terms most often encountered in oncology. It’s been in ongoing development since the 1980s and was previously referred to as the Common Toxicity Criteria. Through continual development and support from the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program, CTCAE aids in the documentation and analysis of adverse events in oncology-related clinical trials.  

Patients know their own experiences best. Evidence has shown that providers are unaware of about half of patients’ symptoms during cancer care. When patients directly report their symptoms using online questionnaires, it can help close this gap in communication. Bringing the patient voice into practice using patient-reported outcomes (PROs) can not only make us aware of their symptoms—enabling earlier interventions—but can also make care delivery more patient-centered.

Technology can—at times—seem miraculous, especially as it evolves in healthcare settings. Simple technologic tools have been able to lower costs, increase efficiency, minimize delays in treatment times, and even provide new, lifesaving procedures for cancer treatment.

Policy advocates and researchers are often conceptualized as separate roles that rarely, if ever, cross. However, in reality many researchers may not have started out as policy advocates, but based on their research findings, or use of research findings in practice, have impacted the world of healthcare policy.