SiriusLink
SiriusLink: an opportunity for process optimisation with advanced data science along the complete surgical breast cancer care pathway
Principles:
SiriusLink has a holistic optimization approach:
– Show value impact in partnership with hospital- Full pathway optimization
– Use real-world hospital administration data, novel data science applications and business process optimization
– Proven to be successful in 2 pilot projects:
Advances in breast cancer localisation technology
Most breast cancers are non-palpable. These mostly require breast conserving surgery. Tumour localisation with a wire or radioactive seed are commonly used localisation techniques but have disadvantages. Surgical marker navigation without radioactivity was introduced to overcome some of these disadvantages. Sirius Pintuition is an example of this technique.
Improving outcomes and experiences
Key elements of the Pintuition value case are improving patient-reported outcomes and experiences of patients and professionals. This helps forming a more well-rounded picture of the effects of a localization method rather than solely focusing on clinical outcomes. When switching from wire-guided surgery to surgical marker navigation, clinical outcomes prove to remain strong, patient reported outcomes are improved (i.e., less anxiety and pain) and satisfaction ratings are higher for both patients and healthcare professionals.
Lowering costs while increasing efficiency: SiriusLink
The SiriusLink program is a novel approach for process optimisation along the complete surgical care pathway. It challenges a team to find better, more efficient ways to work together. In a Dutch hospital and in a hospital in the UK, SiriusLink showed that is feasible to use hospital administrative data and process mining software to get relevant insights for optimization along the complete surgical breast cancer pathway. Besides demonstrating process optimisation potentials, SiriusLink also provides insight into the potential benefits of Sirius Pintuition. IN Royal Marsden (UK), it showed that switching from wire to surgical marker reduced pre-surgery preparation time with one hour due to not inserting a wire resulting in a 10% reduction in time in hospital on day of surgery. Also, patients with a surgical marker were less likely to stay overnight resulting in a 24% reduction in number of patients spending more than 14 h in hospital which can have a positive effect on total costs.
In OLVG (NL), a process model was developed for the envisioned care path for patients with nodal involvement and neo-adjuvant therapy. The intended workflow shows potential efficiency gains which may reduce costs. Post-chemotherapy sentinel node biopsy and wire localisation of the clipped node are replaced by one targeted node streamlining the workflow.
Implementation & future developments
SiriusLink shows the potential of advanced process mining and data mining techniques. By identifying the full real-world pathway per individual breast cancer patient, from diagnosis to end of surgical therapy, improvements can be implemented resulting in lower costs and a better patient experience.
SiriusLink is horizontally and vertically scalable around different medical conditions. Prerequisites are medical leadership and access to digitalized hospital data.