Today’s cancer patient journey means a significant risk of infection on every trip to the hospital. Long waiting times for necessary test results – an annoyance for the rest of the population – put cancer patients in a precarious position of increased infection from the many germs and viruses permeating the hospital environment. This is because cancer patients are often immunosuppressed due to ongoing treatment, making them more susceptible to infection. On top of this, the cancer patient experiences exhaustion, nausea, dizziness and, in some cases, depression.
Indeed, the stress of being a cancer patient is immense, even in the best of times, and the Covid-19 pandemic has not made it any easier, with hospitals pushing treatments off, delaying the start of chemotherapy and pushing off surgeries, if deemed not immediately urgent.
Entering a hospital environment under normal circumstances poses a risk to patients. The current pandemic, which has caused treatment delays, is simply another reason that home-based treatment options should become more readily available to cancer patients. Also, the ease and convenience of home-based treatment options can be a benefit for cancer patients who can avoid the mental and physical exertion of having to go to the hospital. No surprises that the coronavirus pandemic has made patients much more receptive to new remote care options as a way of avoiding potential infection. The environment is now ripe for technologies designed to enable home-based care.This move can support the safe monitoring and treatment of patients outside of hospitals while allowing healthcare systems to operate more efficiently and optimize resources. A
To Make Home-Based Cancer Care Possible Home-based Diagnostics are Needed
To move cancer treatment out of the hospital and into the home, home care providers need several dynamics to change. For example, drug delivery platforms and remote monitoring of symptoms and potential adverse treatment reactions are vital elements needed to realize the goal of home-based cancer care. However, even with such connected technologies in place in the home, cancer patients will still risk infection due to the regular trips they must take to clinical settings for blood testing.
One of the most important tests that cancer patients need regularly is the complete blood count (CBC), which is the key to determining a patient’s treatment progress and the strength of their immune system, enabling oncologists to determine the next treatment steps. This crucial test is currently relegated to a clinical environment in a centralized lab. And this means patients must visit the hospital for the CBC, taking on the additional risk for what is, at its core, a simple blood test.
Given this, a key piece of the home treatment puzzle that must be put in place is access to home-based diagnostic devices that can provide accurate CBC results to enable patients to remain at home for the duration of treatment.
Shifting Diagnostics to the Home
To effectively bring such an important and powerful diagnostic tool to the home, several requirements must be met. First, the tool must be simple and intuitive to operate, so a patient – perhaps with the support of a caregiver – can complete the test reliably and comfortably. The diagnostic results must be lab-accurate, and they must be delivered rapidly. Finally, any home-based hematology analyzer would need to be small (home environments do not have endless space,), yet robust enough to withstand a non-clinical environment. Crucially, such a system would require connectivity to hospital information systems so the remote physician can monitor results and instruct the patient on their next steps.
Such technologies are evolving, giving the system increased hope that more testing can be carried out in a home setting, providing the necessary accuracy and sensitivity required to make clinical decisions remotely.
The Future of Cancer Care
As home-based oncology programs develop, the role of the hospital in the treatment of patients with cancer will evolve. Home-based care will transition to serve as a more central care setting for a significant percentage of cancer patients. In fact, several studies have already shown that treating lower risk cancer patients with fevers associated with abnormally low white blood cell counts (which often occur during chemotherapy) outside the hospital is as safe and effective as treating them in the hospital, at half the cost.
When this transformation takes places, rather than being a routine site of care, hospitals will become a site reserved for expert and intensive care of our sickest patients.
If our ecosystem is sincere about the push to empowering patients and easing the burden on our healthcare systems through homecare, now is the time to focus on this transition. The COVID-19 experience has accelerated innovation in ways we couldn’t have expected. Let’s take advantage of this and improve care delivery models in a way that will make hospitals more efficient and allow patients to receive care in the optimal environment for their recovery.
Photo: harmpeti, Getty Images
