A Digital Intake Tool for Colorectal Cancer Screening Programmes

DITS

In the ‘Knowledge- and Innovation Agenda Health & Care’ it is stated that: ‘healthcare needs to be improved within the following three areas: prevention, translocation and substitution of healthcare’. This project aims to develop the first Digital Intake Tool (DIT) for Fecal Immunochemical Test (FIT) based colorectal cancer (CRC) screening programs and assesses effectiveness of the tool within a screening program. DIT can be performed at home, replacing health care from hospital to home.

Each year more than 2.2 million people between 55-75 years of age are invited for the national CRC screening program. Around 5%, corresponding to 77,000 screenees yearly, have a positive FIT and will be referred for colonoscopy. Currently screenees with a positive FIT need to be seen at an outpatient clinic before colonoscopy is carried out. Reason for this is to assess morbidity, risk of complications and inform patients about the procedure and CRC risk. Most of the screenees are healthy and have a working life. In this study it will be assessed if face-to-face contact can be effectively replaced by a DIT without counteracting adherence to colonoscopy, bowel cleanliness or increase patients anxiety.

This project will develop a DIT tailored for FIT positives. A DIT for CRC screening programmes needs to be understandable for all people, be informative about risks and benefits and instructive. The company Informed, specialised in making animations for medical information provision to (low-literacy) patients will develop the DIT. To assess the effectiveness of the DIT for FIT-based CRC screening programmes, adherence to colonoscopy, satisfaction, bowel cleanliness and anxiety of screenees will be measured.

With this project the hope is to facilitate screenees and health care providers, improve capacity for outpatients visits and reduce health care costs by providing a safe and validated DIT for FIT positive screenees that can be done at home.

Disclaimer
This collaboration project is co-funded by the PPP Allowance made available by Health~Holland, Top Sector Life Sciences & Health, to EMC to stimulate public-private partnerships. For questions, please contact EMC directly via the following email address tki@erasmusmc.nl.
Summary
This project aims to develop a Digital Intake Tool for screenees with an unfavourable faecal test result in the colorectal cancer screening programme. This intake replaces health care from hospital to home, improves patient selection for better referral and prevents screenees with low risk from visiting an outpatient clinic.
Technology Readiness Level (TRL)
4 - 7
Time period
48 months
Partners
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