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Advanced NSCLC Online Tool
An Interactive Online Tool Featuring Expert Recommendations for Advanced NSCLC

Released: August 05, 2016

Expiration: August 04, 2017

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The clinical management of patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is becoming increasingly complex. The realities of current clinical practice require one to consider not only clinical factors such as patient performance status but also specific tumor characteristics such as tumor histology and the presence of specific genetic mutations when planning a treatment course from among many different and reasonable options. The complexity of care seems to be accelerating as even more as distinct and clinically relevant subtypes of NSCLC are being defined along with an ever expanding number of available treatment options. Practice guidelines are useful to help with reimbursement and can provide a general treatment plan for broad groups of patients with advanced NSCLC, listing multiple therapy choices based on the available levels of evidence. However, these guidelines are less useful for selecting therapy for specific patients in practice, where many variables must be considered so that the treatment plan can be individualized to that patient.

To help, my colleagues and I developed an online decision support tool for advanced NSCLC. This tool provides treatment consultation and recommendations from 5 experts for nearly 200 defined patient case scenarios. As a participant, you are able to enter key patient and tumor characteristics using drop-down menus to define the different patient scenarios for which you are interested (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Entering patient and disease characteristics into the tool.

Once the information for your particular patient scenario has been defined, you are able to indicate your planned treatment choice (again using drop-down menus). After entering your treatment choice, you will be shown the individualized treatment recommendations from all 5 of the experts for that specific patient, allowing you to compare them with your planned therapy (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Expert treatment recommendations.

Through this approach, participants can clearly identify clinical scenarios where experts are in agreement on the best treatment options and other scenarios where the available supporting evidence does not clearly favor one treatment over another and, consequently, there is more diversity in expert choices.

During the coming year, I will work with these and other experts to routinely update this online tool so that our recommendations include consideration of emerging data and newly available agents. We hope that you will try this tool and will find it useful in your care of patients with advanced NSCLC.

If you have any suggestions regarding this online tool, please be sure to leave a comment for me below.

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Do you find expert-developed online decision tools, such as the tool described in this post, to be useful in planning therapy for your patients with cancer?
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