How to Improve Pancreatic Cancer Network Care Using a Human-Centered Design Sprint

Pancreatic cancer is considered a complex cancer requiring specific expertise in diagnostic workup and multimodality treatment. Often, multiple health care providers in different hospitals are involved during patient care. This fragmentation of care challenges health care providers in the network to deliver efficient, coherent, and continuous network care. We performed a human-centered design (HCD) sprint in order to find means to improve network care for patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The sprint comprised 5 days with different goals: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. Experts and stakeholders were approached from the pancreatic cancer network to contribute. By using HCD, a goal was defined, various prototypes were explored, and one prototype was tested. The HCD Sprint led to a shared goal, which was to deliver pancreatic cancer network care in a (virtual) hospital in which there is "one narrative." This means that the patient's context and preferences are always clear and taken into account, care is characterized by a short time to diagnosis and treatment, and patient data are easily available for patients and involved clinicians. The accompanying prototypes were (1) network agreements, (2) patient itinerary, (3) transmural trajectory guidance, and (4) data sharing. For the latter, we developed and pilot-tested a real-time data sharing dashboard called CONNECT. The first pilot-test was promising and provided feedback for further development. In this viewpoint paper, we show that a HCD sprint is able to find possible means to improve pancreatic network care in a short time span. A real-time data sharing dashboard (CONNECT) was developed and pilot tested. The next steps include further development of the dashboard, implementation in our network, and long-term evaluation studies.