Abstract
Introduction
The digitisation of the electronic patient record (EPR) provides transformative opportunities for data visualisation. The synchronised timeline and iconographic interface permits the whole-of-life display, navigation and interpretation of all documents and reports of each and every EPR on a single screen, thus substantially facilitating clinical research.
Methods
Since 2010, we have conceived, programmed and iterated a radical interface, UHS Lifelines, within our Trust EPR using agile methodology. It is live for >2.5M record sets, and enriched with cellular pathology records back to 1990. We have integrated this interface into a unique, HTML-enabled, dynamic and continually updated database for the recording of treatments and pathologies of all cases of breast neoplasia from our current and historic record sets.
Results
As of January 2021, our data system contains ∼20,000 sequential whole of life records of patients with breast neoplasia, including ∼15,000 locally diagnosed and ∼ 5,000 externally referred cases. The unique Cancer Lifetrack timelines displays the disease course of every case from primary diagnosis, through loco-regional recurrence, to distant metastasis, other morbid cancers and cause of death, where relevant. An integral data mining system permits a wide range of analyses.
Conclusions
We believe our Breast Cancer Data System to be the first-in-class exemplar of a new and proven approach to clinical data visualisation. It permits near-instantaneous oversight and real time updating of every patient record in the system. We recognise its potential application for the whole-of-life study of all chronic diseases of childhood and adulthood as the model is more widely adopted.