Health information technology tool

The electronic monitoring tool was customized for use in the urology outpatient clinic for men on AS. The top five design seeds identified in the urology clinic as most important for improving monitoring and saving time were as follows: “keeps list up to date,” “customize the patient list,” “ability to control data access,” “population registry functionality for high-risk patients,” and “assign roles and responsibilities” [17]. Based on these results and other input from medical professionals with knowledge of the unique challenges facing the clinic, we partnered with CipherHealth (New York, NY), a healthcare technology company, to develop a registry to aid in patient monitoring. This tool consolidates patient information from three major data sources and provides clinicians with the ability to track patients on AS to ensure up-to-date and timely care (Fig. ​(Fig.1).1). Aside from the automatic feed of data from Openlink, manual data entry by clinical staff is also possible. The AS registry tracks and notifies the clinic team when testing is due, according to the recommended AS protocol (Fig. ​(Fig.2a)2a) [25–27]. This includes PSA testing every 3 months for the first 1–2 years post-enrollment, PSA every 6 months > 2 years post-enrollment, 1 confirmatory biopsy within 12 months of enrollment, biopsy every 2 years > 1 year post-enrollment, follow-up visit every 3–6 months post-enrollment, and MRI as needed (Fig. ​(Fig.22b).

Workflow diagram depicting the various elements of the HIT tool

a Screenshot depicting the population-level view of patients on AS. The patient names are fictitious for demonstration purposes. b Screenshot of AS follow-up tasks on the patient level