Position Paper Alcimed – Improving cancer care by optimizing patient pathways

Cancer is a serious, potentially deadly disease and cancer cases are steadily increasing globally. Together with the rise of cancer cases, the burden for healthcare systems is increasing on the cost side and for patients in terms of unmet needs.

Cancer can be a very complex disease with various levels of staging, types of patients, patient profiles, treatment options, and more. Patients can suffer from many unmet needs, including the lack of treatment options, a reduced quality of life during and after treatment or the unequal access to high-quality care, just to name a few. Unequal access to care includes many different factors, for example geographically difficulties to access care, badly organized care leading to low quality, lack of experienced staff, or issues regarding communication. Many cancer patients do not receive optimal care and they need support to improve their quality of life.

Different options exist to optimize care, yet in this position paper we focus on programs of optimization of cancer care pathways in hospitals, the recurring challenges in cancer care, and the key success factors to address these challenges.

In this position paper you will read about the following key facts:

• What is the objective of optimizing cancer care pathways?
• Who are the stakeholders that will benefit from the optimization of care pathways?
• What are the parts of the treatment pathway of cancer patients that can benefit of improvement?
• What are the key success factors that will allow to improve these areas of the cancer care pathway?

Additionally you will also learn how Alcimed can help you with your challenges around cancer care pathway optimization applying our proprietary methodology and developed tools.