Current Projects

New methods to determine the diagnostic interval for cancer patients using administrative data.  

The proportion of patients presenting with late-stage cancers at diagnosis remains high (nearly 50% stage III/IV). The pre-diagnosis period may represent missed opportunities for earlier cancer detection. A current priority is to explore and implement approaches to streamline patient care during the period (i.e. diagnostic interval) from first relevant medical signs (e.g. “symptoms”) to cancer diagnosis. However, diagnostic intervals are not explicitly documented in routinely collected data. The changes in the patterns of medical encounters (e.g., frequency of visits, physician specialty) may herald the first relevant information for cancer diagnosis. We aimed to develop algorithms to identify diagnostic intervals of patients with common solid cancers based on patterns of care using population-based health data.