Innovative Software Platform for Customized Clinical Transplant Guidelines Accelerates Library Expansion and Increases Clinician Utilization

Introduction Decades of literature and experience demonstrate that clinical pathways can enhance the quality and safety of care in oncology. Clinical pathways, guidelines, and algorithms, are shown to reduce variability, decrease readmission rates, improve patient satisfaction, and may reduce hospital length-of-stay and overall treatment costs. However, two major challenges limit their widespread application: 1) Considerable resources are required to develop, implement, and maintain customized and relevant guidelines; and 2) In most centers, the content is underutilized due to lack of easy and timely access, limitations in user-friendly information display, and delays in pertinent content updates. Objective We sought to expand our library of customized clinical Transplantation and Cellular Therapy (TCT) guidelines through an innovative approach to content digitization and maintenance, with the dual aims of reducing the time required to create and maintain content while also increasing clinician utilization. Methods During the period of 2019-2022, a library of 76 TCT guidelines and pathways was developed by our team to support the best clinical practices in an academic pediatric TCT program projected to grow by 50% and incorporate non-faculty medical staff. To expand accessibility and improve the maintenance process, we partnered with Curbside Health© to implement an innovative software platform designed to securely digitize our content within a collaborative editing environment and governance structure that connected the end-user experience to a multi-modal utilization interface dynamically suited to the clinical situation or location. Results In early 2023, the guideline content was rapidly migrated and within two months our library expanded to 210 customized items. Annualized, we expect approximately an 85% reduction in the time and resources dedicated to content creation and maintenance. During the first 9 months, we had 160 total users, with an average of 63 users per month and over 11,900 page views, representing a utilization rate within our clinical scope area of greater than 95%. These successful early results were driven by a high returning user rate of 82% and sustained utilization (Figure). 100% of users accessed our content library via the cloud-based software portal and 17% of users accessed the mobile application. Conclusion Guidelines and pathways are powerful resources to aid frontline decisions that directly impact patient care and quality. Customized, evidence-based content that is regularly updated and easy to access allows programs to expand while maintaining high standards across providers. Our digital-first platform reduced the time required to develop content and increased clinician utilization, thereby showing promise to efficiently support patient care both within our organization and in collaboration with other health systems.