The Information Systems Department at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center developed the DARWIN Cohort Management System (DCMS). The DCMS identifies and tracks cohorts of patients based on genotypic and clinical data. It assists researchers and treating physicians in enrolling patients to genotype-matched IRB-approved clinical trials. The DCMS sends automated, actionable, and secure email notifications to users with information about eligible or enrolled patients before their upcoming appointments. The system also captures investigators input via annotations on patient eligibility and preferences on future status updates. As of August 2015, the DCMS is tracking 159,893 patients on both clinical operations and research cohorts. 134 research cohorts have been established and track 64,473 patients. 51,192 of these have had one or more genomic tests including MSK-IMPACT, comprising the pool eligible for genotype-matched studies. This paper describes the design and evolution of this Informatics solution.

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Objectives: To document outcomes associated with use of scleral contact lenses (SL) in the veteran population and analyze the medical and demographic factors that affect these outcomes, specifically those involved in contact lens discontinuation. Methods: A retrospective study of consecutive patients first fitted with Jupiter Scleral lenses at the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center between 2010 and 2018. The primary outcome was continuation of SL use at 1 year. Demographic factors and variables such as presence of comorbid diseases, improvement in visual acuity, and daily lens wear time were compared. Logistic regression analysis was used to determine which factors were associated with SL discontinuation. Results: One hundred twenty patients with a mean age of 56.7±15.1 years were fitted with SL during the study period. The most common diagnosis was corneal ectasia (55.8%). Sixty-six (55.0%) patients had difficulty with wear, the most common being ocular irritation (20.0%) and mid-day fogging or bubbles (15.8%). Forty-one patients (34.2%) discontinued SL use with a median time from fitting to discontinuation of 5.2 months. The most common reason for SL discontinuation was difficulty with insertion and removal (53.7%). Comorbid neurologic disease had a statistically significant association with discontinuation (odds ratio 4.6, 95% confidence interval 1.3–17, P=0.022). There were statistically significant differences in mean visual acuity improvement (P=0.003) and daily wear time (P<0.001) but not age (P=0.70) between patients who continued and discontinued lens use. Conclusions: Scleral contact lenses are effective for treating a wide variety of ocular diseases and have positive outcomes in veterans. This study aids in understanding patient factors that affect outcomes of SL use in veterans. Further prospective studies are needed to make formal recommendations regarding candidate selection.

To assess the repeatability and comparability of the Galilei G4 versus the Cassini topographer in post-refractive eyes and in normal eyes, including older patients representative of an initial cataract evaluation. Simulated keratometric (simK), total corneal and posterior corneal power and astigmatism were evaluated in both post-refractive and normal eyes. Repeatability was measured by calculating within-subject standard deviation (Sw), coefficient of variation (CoV), and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). Vector analyses and Bland–Altman plots were employed to assess agreement between devices. We studied 32 subjects with a history of refractive surgery and 32 subjects without a history of refractive surgery undergoing cataract surgery. The mean age was 55 ± 18.5 years and the age range was 21.5–91.5 years. In non-refractive and post-refractive eyes, the ICC was > 0.9 (P < 0.001) for all corneal powers and for simK and total corneal astigmatism for both analyzers. The ICC for posterior corneal astigmatism magnitude using the Galilei was 0.62 and 0.67 and for the Cassini 0.55 and 0.38 in normal and post-refractive eyes, respectively. In both post-refractive and normal eyes, the Galilei G4 and Cassini analyzers have high repeatability in simK, total, and posterior corneal power and low repeatability for posterior corneal astigmatism.