Molecular Tumor Board Workflow

SYAPSE ONCOLOGY WEB APP CAPABILITY

Syapse provides a streamlined workflow for Molecular Tumor Board members to manage requests for case review, review cases, create drug and/or trial recommendations, and disseminate recommendations to the treating oncologist. Patient data in Syapse is comprehensive, organized, and integrated, increasing the applicability of recommendations, review capacity, and overall MTB productivity.

My Role & Team

Lead Designer

At the time of this project, I was the only designer at Syapse. Hence I owned the user research, information architecture, prototyping, ideation, interaction design, and visual design for the Molecular Tumor Board feature.

Product Team

I worked closely with the Director of Product, front-end and server engineers as well as the leadership team to the envision and develop of this capability.

Challenge

Enabling physicians and experts to efficiently review patient cases and make treatment recommendations

Molecular Tumor Boards are environments where expert physicians and scientists discuss patients of all types of cancer whose tumor has been analyzed with advanced genomic diagnostic tests - with the goal of translating the patient’s genomic profile into actionable treatment recommendations.

Prior to Syapse, health systems had a very loosely-defined MTB process that was dependent on an inefficient EMR-based data-gathering workflow, supported by PowerPoint slides, paper reports, and other pieces of unstructured data assembled in an ad hoc fashion for each MTB meeting. Furthermore, coordinating molecular experts, medical oncologists, and other clinical staff across multiple cancer centers was a significant challenge. Under those circumstances, MTBs spent inordinate amounts of time per patient case, often being unable to review all necessary data or capture discrete MTB results and recommendations.

Syapse was also re-building the oncology platform and our product team took this as an opportunity to re-imagine the Molecular Tumor Board experience.

Constraints

Create a standard, scalable enterprise capability that meet the workflow needs across multiple healthcare organizations

Each customer organization runs their own Molecular Tumor Board - each organization their own set of workflows and unique needs.

Process

Research

Onsite Observations: We observed Molecular Tumor Board meetings across customers to understand how they review MTB Cases

Usability testing: For customers who were using Syapse for the MTB, I dug into their key pain points with the application and identified product gaps based on their workflow.

Stakeholder interviews: I interviewed key opinion leaders and internal leadership to understand future landscape of the Molecular Tumor Board. The MTB is a new service offering at many healthcare organization and it was important to learn how Cancer Centers want to extend this service in the future.

Consolidated workflow diagram

Based on the research, I created a consolidated customer diagram which reflects the Molecular Tumor Board workflow across our customers. The map indicates user type, customer organization, key pain points in the workflow and the tools are used to facilitate particular steps. For example, the diagram indicates where the MTB coordinator uses Excel and email to manage the MTB consult requests from the physician.

INFLUENCE ON PRODUCT STRATEGY

I presented the customer journey map to the leadership team and indicated key areas for product development. Together, we brainstormed and came up with the ideal customer journey using Syapse as the preferred tool powering the Molecular Tumor Board. This exercise resulted in a product roadmap of the MTB feature and proposed feature set that can be built in future release cycles.

Design

Wireframes, rapid prototypes & user testing

Through my wireframe explorations, I started to shape how the Molecular Tumor Board capability can fit our user needs based on the customer research. I made several prototypes for remote and in-person user testing at various customer sites. These prototypes focused on various use cases targeted for each user type.

For example, physicians used a click-through prototype to provide feedback on the overall workflow for the physician: from requesting a case review, creating a case summary and reviewing the MTB case.

MTB coordinators went through a prototype focused on managing and scheduling MTB cases as well as signing off a MTB recommendation.

Through these prototypes, we learned what key information users needed to share with the MTB as well as validated what patient scenarios necessitated a Molecular Tumor Board Review.

An early Invision prototype showing how a physician can request MTB review.

Molecular Tumor Board Workflow

RESULT

The Molecular Tumor Board tool is being used at various Syapse health systems - enabling organizations to efficiently review cancer patients and provide treatment recommendations.

The tool provides a streamlined workflow for MTB members to manage requests for case review, review cases, create drug and/or trial recommendations, and disseminate recommendations to the treating oncologist. Patient data in Syapse is comprehensive, organized, and integrated, increasing the applicability of recommendations, review capacity, and overall MTB productivity.

Simple Case Preparation

Auto-generated Case Summary

Physicians can easily request a MTB review and prepare a case. Leveraging integrations with the health systems electronic medical record and diagnostic labs, Syapse automatically creates a case details summary of the patient's clinical and molecular information. Physicians can choose to modify or add supplementary information that he / she may deem helpful for the Molecular Tumor Board.

Harnessing expert knowledge

ANYWHERE, ANY PLACE, ANY TIME

The Molecular Tumor Board Syapse capability facilitates an interdisciplinary clinical experts to easily review patient cases and discuss possible treatment interventions. Experts can review to patient cases and gather evidence to share within the tool prior to the meeting. The comment thread feature also enables experts to have productive conversations asynchronously, and allows them to review cases outside of meetings. Once MTB members arrive to a consensus on the next course of action for the patient, they can document their recommendations discretely, outlining therapeutic treatments for the patient.

Case Management and Triage

With numerous elements designed, the Syapse MTB Workflow can manage complex items such as managing multiple tumor boards, scheduling and triaging patient cases, and treatment recommendation entry. Screens were assembled with specific elements to accomplish user tasks and cater to their needs.