HIPAA News

RTOG Selects HIPAA Compliant VisionTree Optimal Care to Collect Quality of Life Patient Outcomes Data

(Jan 15, 2008)-- VisionTree, provider of  Web-based patient-centered health record management announced that the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) through the American College of Radiology selected its VisionTree Optimal Care (VTOC) platform for collecting quality of life patient outcomes data for a pilot study conducted by the RTOG. RTOG will use the system at a select number of member institutions for a prostate cancer study in order to improve the compliance of the data collection, validation and reporting processes.

“Clinical research typically has its greatest challenges in collecting patient-completed information, since it is usually done through a paper or phone survey,” said Benjamin Movsas, M.D., Chair of Radiation Oncology at Detroit’s Henry Ford Hospital and Principal Investigator of an RTOG pilot study testing the VTOC system. “VTOC offers us the ability to move this process to an electronic format through a secure Web portal to collect data in a faster and more compliant manner. The platform also allows us to deliver relevant information to the patient including reminders, education material and study information more effectively in order to manage their treatment. VTOC is a system whose time has come.”

VTOC’s user-friendly, HIPAA-secure, Web-based platform allows consenting patients to fill out their quality of life forms in real-time from any location that has Internet access, including their home. The system can also send patients reminders via e-mail or text messaging to increase the likelihood of their on-going participation.

“VTOC will be an important part of our analysis of prostate cancer patients, and will be used by 15 sites to pilot the use of a Web-based data collection and communication in clinical trials, including the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota and Washington University at St. Louis,” said Deborah Bruner, Ph.D., RTOG Outcomes Committee Chair and Quality of Life co-chair of the study as well as Director, Recruitment, Retention and Outreach Core Facility, Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania. “Since many people are familiar and comfortable with Internet applications, we estimate that the system will provide us an increase in patient participation over the ‘pad and pencil’ survey program that’s in place now. That means the quality of our data will be even more credible and usable.”

VTOC is fully compliant with Title 21, Part 11 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) statistical process control system pertaining to electronic records and signatures. The platform can collect outcomes data by exporting Microsoft Excel with PDF reports, and can “push” the survey to patients for completion at timed intervals with reminders and education material, if desired.

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