Clinical Decision Support System for Determining the Stages to Access Diagnosis, and Suggest a Protocol for Breast Cancer Treatment رسالة ماجستير

Abstract

Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers. However, it is considered the most treatable and life-saving disease, especially when early examinations are performed. Mortality rates are declining as a result of early diagnosis and better treatment. Oncologists need precise tools to help to guide clinical decisions, improve patient survival, promotes better quality of health care, and reduce patient burdens, such as high costs, time, and effort, due to the medical complexity of breast cancer, limited physician time, and the need to make decisions ,evidence-based decision-making environment. In this study, a Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) has been developed due to the growing need for decisions, at different stages of the patient's clinical journey, such as diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring, to help oncologists to identify, diagnose disease stages, conclude, and suggest possible treatment protocols that are appropriate. The stage after filtering the chemotherapy and hormonal treatment protocols in a scientific way proposed by internationally accredited guidelines (NCCN GUIDELINE), which makes the oncologist rely on this program as a single source instead of referring to many sources, programs, medical dictionaries, or the internet, VI so that the oncologist’s task is to choose the best treatment for the patient and reduce medical error. After months and years of using this system, it may provide a treatment plan capable of giving the best results, and arranging these protocols according to the most used and successful, because the system includes the feature of evaluating each treatment protocol after the sessions, as well as arranging and organizing the information entered into the system and including all the characteristics and parameters. The disease and its automatic retrieval through an automatic report that appears in an ascending order that tells the patient’s details from the first to the last visit. The clinical decision support system was tested by entering 95 patients and training doctors to use it in the work environment at Beit Jala Governmental Hospital. After adopting the proposed system by a health institution specialized in cancer in Palestine, the researcher recommends developing the system in the future to include all types of cancers. It also hopes to implement it in all Palestinian Ministry of Health hospitals