Oncotherapy: A System for Requesting Chemotherapy Protocols

A clinical decision support system is able to provide oncologists with suitable treatment options at the moment of decision making regarding which chemotherapy protocol is the best to apply to a particular oncological case. The National Cancer Institute has created a Guidelines Committee that establishes therapeutical options for each clinical case. The Health Informatics Department has developed Oncotherapy, a knowledge database that incorporates information provided by the Guidelines Committee. Oncotherapy includes a tailored information repository to provide oncologists in the public health system with the chemotherapy protocols available given three types of data: clinical diagnosis, clinical stage and therapy criteria. The protocol selected by the treating oncologist is sent back to Oncotherapy, which may create new knowledge that can be incorporated into the knowledge database. In this way, the system supports making the best decision according to the chemotherapy protocol options available. Furthermore, it can warn of errors that could result from mistakenly chosen therapies.