Current Status and Challenges of a Computerized Clinical Pathway for Gastric Cancer in a Regional Alliance Network

Abstract

While hospitals that have introduced planning in collaboration with primary care providers to share the therapeutic process and common policies for medical treatment, a clinical pathway in a regional alliance for cancer has been established and used as a tool to provide safer and higher quality health care. The clinical pathway focuses on the top 5 cancers and has been used throughout the area of Fuchu and Fukuyama in the eastern part of Hiroshima Prefecture, where our hospital is situated. A paper-based clinical pathway for gastric cancer was introduced in April 2012 and has been used in pStage I patients who underwent surgery. The common network infrastructure promoted in Hiroshima Prefecture, called the Hiroshima Medical Network (HM Net), has been used to make the clinical pathway more convenient since April 2016, thus, enabling both, hospitals involved in planning and primary care physicians, to simultaneously manage patients. We are looking for ways to establish a new system for the computerized clinical pathway in the regional alliance that is more effective than the paper-based clinical pathway system. Here, we report the current status and challenges of our clinical pathway in a regional alliance with the HM Met.