The National Cancer Institute (NCI) https://www.cancer.gov will award $23 million to four academic institutions to establish Centers of Excellence to research the role of telehealth in delivering cancer information.
During the pandemic, the use and availability of telehealth skyrocketed in primary and specialty care, including cancer care. However, little is understood about how best to use and sustain telehealth in providing cancer-related care.
The research by the four centers will study the role of telehealth in fields from prevention to screening, diagnosis to treatment, and survivorship. Each center will be led by an academic institution that has assembled diverse teams of researchers to conduct large trials in real world clinical settings, such in hospitals, cancer centers, oncology practices, and primary care offices.
The four funded centers include:
- The Telehealth Research and Innovation for Veterans with Cancer to be led by NYU Grossman School of Medicine will work with the VHA to examine how social factors such as race and ethnicity, poverty, and living in rural affects the delivery of telehealth for cancer care.
- Scalable Telehealth Cancer Care Center to be led by Northwestern University will focus on using telehealth to extend health services to cancer survivors aimed at reducing risk behaviors
- University of Pennsylvania Telehealth Research Center of Excellence to be led by the University of Pennsylvania on how to use communication science and behavioral economics to compare the effectiveness of multiple telehealth strategies concerning shared decision-making for lung cancer screening and how to improve timely access to comprehensive molecular testing for advanced lung cancer
- Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) to study the effectiveness of using a remote monitoring system called MSK@Home for patients receiving systemic treatments for prostate and breast cancer
In addition to developing innovative ways to use telehealth in cancer care, the centers will also identify and address telehealth-related disparities among vulnerable populations, including racial and ethnic groups rural residents, older adults, people who are uninsured or low income, people who are socially isolated and people with limited digital literacy.