Cancer multidisciplinary team meetings: evidence, challenges, and the role of clinical decision support technology

Abstract

Multidisciplinary team (MDT) model in cancer care was introduced and endorsed to ensure that care delivery is consistent with the best available evidence. Over the last few years, regular MDT meetings have become a standard practice in oncology and gained the status of the key decision-making forum for patient management. Despite the fact that cancer MDT meetings are well accepted by clinicians, concerns are raised over the paucity of good-quality evidence on their overall impact. There are also concerns over lack of the appropriate support for this important but overburdened decision-making platform. The growing acceptance by clinical community of the health information technology in recent years has created new opportunities and possibilities of using advanced clinical decision support (CDS) systems to realise full potential of cancer MDT meetings. In this paper, we present targeted summary of the available evidence on the impact of cancer MDT meetings, discuss the reported challenges, and explore the role that a CDS technology could play in addressing some of these challenges.

Figure 1

Composite screenshot describing some of the functionalities of an example CDS tool developed for breast cancer MDT meeting. Upper left: the summary screen for the patient. Upper right: one of the many prognostication tools available, Lower left: decision panel where system recommendations and eligible clinical trials are highlighted in blue. Lower right: the evidential justification for each recommended option.