Design of an Electronic Health Record for Treating and Monitoring Oncology Patients in Chile

Abstract

Identifying the clinical needs to evaluate and manage the treatment and monitoring of cancer patients is a multidimensional challenge in healthcare institutions. In this regard, electronic health records (EHRs) are beneficial for managing clinical information; however, EHRs focused exclusively on patients with cancer have not been sufficiently adopted. In Chile, the need for oncology EHR has only been briefly addressed, resulting in insufficient updated and systematized information on oncology patients. In this paper, we propose the design of an oncology EHR that manages critical variables and processes for the treatment and monitoring of patients with cancer in Chile. We used a systematic methodology to design a software architecture oriented to focus groups and interviews to elicit the requirements and needs of stakeholders. We created and described an EHR design that considers four modules that group and manage the main variables and processes that are critical for treating and monitoring oncology patients. Enabling and designing a treatment and monitoring registry for cancer patients in Chile is essential because it allows for the evaluation of strategic clinical decisions in favor of patients.