In the ever-evolving field of oncology, cancer centers are among the earliest adopters of healthcare technologies, driven by the need to outpace the dynamic nature of cancer itself.
FHIR®-Power Helps Save Time and Streamlines Efficiency for Clinicians
Flatiron Health and Canopy Partner to Simplify Workflow Complexities for Cancer Centers
In recent years, healthcare technologies have demonstrated significant value across various facets of cancer care, from enhancing patient outcomes to streamlining practice operations, fostering research, and even aiding in clinical decision-making. Yet, effectively integrating multiple systems into existing practice workflows can sometimes add more burden than benefit for hardworking care teams. Each day, clinicians are juggling multiple applications, navigating various logins, and manually entering information from one system to the next.
So how are practices effectively managing complex workflows across multiple technology systems? In this case study, we explore how leading community oncology practices are collaborating with technology partners—Flatiron Health and Canopy—to ensure seamless interoperability between the systems their care teams use every day. By harnessing the capabilities of Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIRⓇ), these practices are able to significantly reduce administrative burden for their staff, freeing up more time for what matters most—patient care.
The Challenge: Balancing Technology and Patient Care
Flatiron and Canopy partner with numerous oncology practices, with certain care team members, particularly triage nurses, using Flatiron’s OncoEMRⓇ system and Canopy’s Intelligent Care Platform side-by-side each day. With a shared commitment to delivering the best possible experience for the care teams they serve, Flatiron and Canopy recently expanded their integrations to focus on enhanced interoperability across products: OncoEMR, Flatiron’s oncology-specific EHR, and the Canopy Intelligent Care Platform, featuring oncology-specific remote monitoring and triage management tools.
"Transforming cancer care takes all of us. It’s important to build a system architecture that enables seamless collaboration. Flatiron’s investment in FHIR-powered interoperability enables us to partner with other technology leaders like Canopy to solve important problems for our customers, ensuring they have the tools they need to provide the best care for their patients."
—Nina Chavez, VP of Strategic Partnerships and Alliances at Flatiron Health
“At Canopy, we believe that when care teams succeed, patients succeed. That’s why we are laser-focused on improving the day-to-day workflows of our end users—in this case, triage nurses—to make every second count.”
—Chantel Hopper, Head of Marketing & Customer Success at Canopy
Bi-directional integrations between the Canopy Platform and OncoEMR have been longstanding, amplifying Canopy's ability to streamline continuous care management for triage teams. Vital patient information from OncoEMR integrates into the Canopy Platform, embedding key patient context, such as diagnoses and treatment data, within patient symptom reports and triage pathways. This data flow enables the flagging of urgent symptom reports, helping triage nurses better prioritize patient issues based on clinical urgency and reach the best "next step" in the triage process faster. Key information from the Canopy Platform, including information gathered during triage phone calls and other patient-related notes, are automatically pushed into OncoEMR as documents, significantly reducing the administrative burden associated with charting across systems.
Still, triage nurses and other care teams using the Canopy Platform are constantly navigating workflows across both systems, working side-by-side from the Patient Page in Canopy and the Patient Chart in OncoEMR. Based on feedback from users, Canopy and Flatiron recognized an opportunity to enhance usability beyond “behind-the-scenes” integrations to true interoperability for a better user experience.
From Integration to Interoperability: A New Level of Collaboration
To achieve the goal of greater interoperability, Flatiron and Canopy leveraged FHIR APIs to build bi-directional navigation between OncoEMR and the Canopy Platform. This new feature enables users to seamlessly navigate from the Patient Chart in OncoEMR to the Patient Page in Canopy, and vice versa, with a single click.
“Adopting new technologies is critical to delivering the highest quality care, but we want to be sure our staff can focus on that patient care, not the systems. The ability for our nurses to easily navigate between OncoEMR and Canopy saves a significant amount of time for patient care."
—Dr. Jeff Vacirca, CEO at New York Cancer & Blood Specialists
Before, nurses were manually copying and pasting information across systems to search for relevant information during each patient interaction or task. Now, with the bidirectional connectivity between Canopy and OncoEMR, users save an average of 8 clicks per patient interaction, which can equate to more than an hour of time savings every week. At scale, this enhanced interoperability can significantly reduce the administrative burden for triage teams and further streamline workflows across the broader practice. For example, a ten-person triage team could save up to 1.5 days of administrative time per week.¹
“One simple button saves me the hassle of copying and pasting information from system to system. I can work through my tasks and return patient calls faster.”
—Claribel Lascano, RN, Triage Nurse at Northwest Oncology & Hematology
Together, Flatiron and Canopy, in one of the first integrations of its kind, are helping to set a new standard for healthcare interoperability—one that prioritizes patient care, practice efficiency, and the day-to-day experiences of hardworking care teams.
About Flatiron Health
Flatiron Health is a healthtech company expanding the possibilities for point of care solutions in oncology and using data for good to power smarter care for every person with cancer. Through machine learning and AI, real-world evidence, and breakthroughs in clinical trials, we continue to transform patients’ real-life experiences into knowledge and create a more modern, connected oncology ecosystem. Flatiron is an independent affiliate of the Roche Group.
OncoEMR is Flatiron’s oncology-specific Electronic Health Record (EHR) that helps oncologists and care teams spend more time with patients and less time with software. With the latest solutions for interoperability, Flatiron’s technology simplifies the healthcare information exchange process allowing clinicians and care teams to seamlessly use their preferred applications at the point of care.
About Canopy
Canopy, an intelligent platform for continuous care management, provides oncology practices with comprehensive tools for all the care that happens between patient visits. Canopy’s multi-channel ePRO and remote triage system empower care teams to identify and prioritize patients who need help, resolve patient issues with intelligent decision support tools, and generate new reimbursement streams from high-quality care delivery.
Learn More
Contact the Canopy team to learn more about streamlining workflow efficiencies at your practice.