Canopy, the first Intelligent Care Platform for oncology, today announced results from a seventeen-month, real-world study of their ePRO-based patient monitoring platform. The single-site study of 923 patients at Highlands Oncology Group demonstrates the Canopy platform can be effectively implemented at a large scale with a high level of long-term patient enrollment, engagement, and retention. The study also found that the vast majority of patient issues were effectively resolved by nurse specialists and physician intervention was infrequently required. 

Canopy’s poster presentation will highlight an observational study of 2,340 patients across three practices and multiple classes of therapy, including chemotherapy and immunotherapy. Results show that the proportion of patients monitored by Canopy’s platform (the ePRO cohort) were more likely to remain on therapy at 3 months. The proportion of people who remained on treatment at 3 months ranged from 22 percent - 45 percent higher in the ePRO cohort as compared to patients in the non-ePRO cohort (70.1 percent vs 57.4 percent for bevacizumab, 79.5 percent vs 65.2 percent for pembrolizumab, and 65.9 percent vs 45.6 percent for rituximab).

The study’s results were highly meaningful and selected for publication by the Journal of Clinical Oncology in the October issue.

Key findings from the study include:

• Patient engagement is strong: Engagement with Canopy’s electronic patient-reported outcomes (ePRO) app and interactive voice response (IVR) system was 88% at 6 months, with 12-month retention greatest among patients 65 years or older. 
• Patient care improves, while staff burden remains the same or decreases: Only 15% of patient issues identified in Canopy required a phone call, and thousands of patient issues were resolved with the same staffing as before Canopy use.
• Issues were identified early and fewer patients needed an office visit: While over 29,000 reports were submitted by patients, the system was able to optimize and prioritize staff work, identifying that only 31% required some action and an even smaller percentage (~6%) required an office visit.

“People with cancer experience a wide variety of treatment side effects and disease-related symptoms that are extremely challenging for the care team to identify and resolve between office visits. These ultimately negatively impact outcomes and the patient experience,” said Michael Kolodziej, MD, Head of the Medical Advisory Board at Canopy. “This study adds to a growing body of evidence that suggests patients are ready and willing to remotely engage with providers. The oncology care delivery model needs to evolve to optimize patient care.”

With the rate of new cancer cases increasing, the need to scale patient engagement and optimize treatment also grows. Streamlining staff workflows and reducing the administrative burden to support a growing number of patients is critical to preventing care team burnout. Canopy partners with practices to optimize staff workflows and reduce the administrative burden related to inbound patient requests, freeing up staff to deliver care. Canopy is fully embedded into clinical workflows, the EMR, and triage systems and provides decision support to help clinical teams better support patients at scale.

A Highlands Oncology Group director and Canopy user, Traci Yeftich, indicated that they could support more cancer patients with the same staff using Canopy. She said, “Highlands has become more operationally efficient since working with Canopy. Many departments have been able to streamline workflows and return calls faster. Our switchboard team creates tickets for incoming calls and the smart template guides them through message entry. Typing a few keywords helps quickly populate the category needed and filters calls by type, location, and provider. The ease of ticket entry and visibility of all calls on the dashboard has positively impacted our ability to respond to and care for patients.”

Additional studies are in progress that further explore Canopy’s ability to improve patient outcomes and reduce burden for medical staff and operational teams.

About Canopy

Canopy provides oncology practices with intelligent solutions to optimize the delivery of  continuous care for patients and caregivers throughout their cancer journey. Canopy’s data-driven, Intelligent Care Platform is a comprehensive suite of products that consists of a multi-channel (voice and mobile) patient-reported outcomes (ePROs) system that seamlessly enables people with cancer to communicate symptoms. Canopy’s patient relationship management (PRM) system intelligently routes, prioritizes, and supports care teams with triaged patient engagement workflows making interactions more efficient and satisfying. Canopy integrates with EMR and PM systems, simultaneously driving enhanced patient care, efficient clinical workflows, and streamlined billing for care interactions. For more information or a demonstration, visit: www.canopycare.us or contact us.