Digital triage for acute oncology
Acute oncology triage lines play a vital role in providing emergency round-the-clock support for patients with cancer who experience side-effects from their treatment.
Early assessment and advice is crucial to deliver safe care and support the best possible outcomes. However, acute oncology services face numerous challenges.
There is often limited capacity to answer calls in a timely fashion, particularly out of hours. Many calls are inappropriate and stretch limited acute oncology resources. Clinicians have no ability to prioritise high-risk patients using current systems.
Out of hours services typically engage less specialist nurses. This means that low-risk patients are often advised to visit hospital when they do not need to do so.
There is no routine logging of information from acute oncology lines, such as call volumes, wait-times and patient symptoms and outcomes. This limits opportunities for service evaluation and improvement.
I was able to quickly contact the AOS Nurse using the ACORN™ app. She was already aware of my symptoms, which saved a lot of explanation, and meant a decision about my care was made much more quickly
Patient, after trialling the ACORN™ app
Designed specifically for acute oncology triaging, ACORN™ is a web-based platform that enhances access to cancer nurses by enabling real-time communication through built-in phone and messaging features. It supports clinical decision-making by capturing patient symptom data and providing clinicians with tools to prioritise care and access critical information quickly.
ACORN™ is built by 52North in collaboration with the East of England Cancer Alliance and with support from the NIHR. ACORN™ is currently being piloted by hospital sites in the UK.