Join the mCODE/CodeX Community of Practice next Friday to hear Jessica Skopac from MITRE who will provide an introduction to HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR). Register for the July 30, 12-1 ET call.
New Member Joins the CodeX Movement
The work of the CodeX Community is moved forward by the dedicated work of our Members.
Principia Health joined CodeX as a Developer/Implementer Member this month. The Principia Health team will inform development efforts of the CDC’s MedMorph architecture using their FHIR expertise and familiarity of the CIBMTR SMART on FHIR app.
Please email Steve Bratt or Kim Ball if your organization would like to learn more about becoming a CodeX Member and drive the future of “Smarter data for the fight against cancer.”
Recent CodeX Use Case Achievements
Use cases leveraging the mCODE standard are making substantial progress. CodeX teams are demonstrating how the mCODE standard can be employed to collect oncology data once and enable it to be shared for multiple purposes. Here are the most recent updates for CodeX use cases:
ICAREdata or EHR Endpoints for Clinical Trials continues to expand training across the nine health systems that are implementing tools to capture and/or extract mCODE data in their electronic health record systems, with collection underway at three institutions. Five clinical trials partnered with this use case to have ICAREdata methods embedded in their protocols and more trials are under joining through a companion protocol.
The Trial Matching use case team will present an early look at its Phase 1 results at the September Community of Practice meeting. (Register here) Final tasks include (a) converting patient data from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center into mCODE records, (b) running the records through clinical trial matching services to conduct analysis on the discriminatory value of the optimized patient data elements and (c) wrapping up the pilot with Cancer Insights. The team will discuss the findings from the patient data manager application (Phase 1A) and EHR (Phase 1B) pilots. The team would like to congratulate TrialJectory on completion of their now mCODE-enabled matching service! Please contact Caroline Potteiger (cpotteiger@mitre.org) for more information and to join this work.
The use case for cancer Registry Reporting is planning a pilot for a proof of concept with the University of California San Francisco and the California Cancer Registry (additional California based systems are welcome to join this pilot). The team is also coordinating with the Michigan Cancer Surveillance Program (MCSP) for support of a pilot activity involving Michigan based health systems. All pilots plan to leverage the CDC’s eCR/MedMorph Reference Architecture, with a cancer reporting module specifically developed for this use case. Reach out to Greg Shemancik (gshemancik@mitre.org) for more information and to join in the work.
The Radiation Therapy use case continues to plan for the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise – Radiation Oncology (IHE-RO) Connectathon in early November. At the connectathon the radiation therapy end of treatment summary data defined by the CodeX Radiation Therapy team will be created and tested via vendor systems. The team is also defining and modeling radiation therapy prescription data elements, preparing for the transmission of an in-progress treatment summaries. Reach out to Anthony DiDonato (adidonato@mitre.org) if you’re interested in joining this project.
The Prior Authorization in Oncology team will begin hosting open meetings to continue the community discussion from June 3rd to explore current state of problems faced in provider-payer oncology data exchange. Starting on July 27th, the team will lead public working sessions to drive toward standards that leverage FHIR, including the Da Vinci and mCODE Implementation Guides. See the HL7 Calendar for details and to add the meeting to your calendar. All interested community members are welcome. Reach out to kim.ball@pocp.com with any questions or for more information about joining this effort.
mCODE/CodeX Community of Practice Recap
The June 25th mCODE/CodeX Community of Practice call (presentation slides and recording) featured presentations from Ryan Bernard, Technical Coordinator and Team Lead, Epic, discussing current and future support plans for mCODE, as well as Melanie Combs-Dyer, Director of Innovation, Mettle Solutions, and Sreekanth Puram, CTO, Mettle Solutions, delivering an update and proof-of-concept demonstration on behalf of the CodeX Prior Authorization in Oncology use case team.
Ryan covered the current documentation support for mCODE accessible within Epic to support the ICAREdata use case. Highlights included Epic’s build guide for mCODE, which includes step-by-step directions for building Smartforms that streamline documentation (using quick buttons) of critical mCODE data elements—like disease status and reason for disease status. (Note: As of November 2020, this Smartform is already pre-built into Epic and can be used in provider workflows as is.) The build guide also includes directions for adding “reminders” to ensure data collection. Ryan also discussed Epic’s approach to implementing the next waves of mCODE data elements in Epic systems. The first wave includes approximately 32 data elements critical to advancing CodeX use cases. Epic customers can also anticipate implementation guides to support analysis of mCODE data elements that are being captured. All vendors interested in supporting mCODE are welcome to engage in the CodeX community.
Next Melanie presented key themes and next steps from the Codex Prior Authorization in Oncology use case team’s June 3 public discovery session. Sreekanth followed the summary with a demonstration of the team’s initial proof of concept using a mock EHR and medication order workflow – showing how a provider would check payer prior authorization requirements for a medication order, interact with a questionnaire pre-populated with existing EHR data and submit the data back to the payers. The proof-of-concept highlights use of mCODE data elements as well as existing Da Vinci Burden Reduction Project standards applied to oncology.
mCODE Update
The mCODE standard is currently available for use as a first version of a standard for trial use, referred to as STU1. A second version of the standard (STU2) has been balloted by the standards community, and about 65 comments on the revised version have been submitted, based on CodeX experience and other stakeholder input. Follow progress on mCODE by reviewing the continuous integration (CI) build. Also, review differences between STU1 and STU2 via this change log.
Look for the 2.0 release in September.
Upcoming Events
- Join the July CodeX/mCODE Community of Practice call next Friday with Jessica Skopac from MITRE who will be providing an introduction to HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR). Register for the July 30, 12-1 ET call. Participation is open to all.
- Prior Authorization in Oncology Working Session – July 27, 10:30-11:30 a.m. ET. See the HL7 Calendar
- Connect with CodeX at HIMSS! Andre Quina, Principal Investigator, Oncology Standard Health Record at MITRE, will participate in the HIMSS Interoperability Showcase in a session titled “Igniting Interoperability with the FHIR Accelerators” on August 11, 3-4 ET
Stay in Touch!
If you would like to stay up to date with the latest mCODE and CodeX related news and updates, please go to our CodeX Confluence home page and click "Join a CodeX Listserv." Please contact Steve Bratt or Kim Ball with any questions, comments, or content ideas!
- New Approach Could Make Clinical Trials More Equitable and Accessible. The MITRE Corporation. June 2021.
- The Future of Oncology Data is Happening Now. ASTRO Blog. June 2021.
- American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network. (2021. May 18). ACS CAN and CodeX Lead Project to Expand Cancer Clinical Trial Enrollment Through Improved Technology [Press release]
- Informonster Podcast Steve Bratt, CodeX Program Manager, and Carmela Couderc, Clinical Informaticist at MITRE, to discus mCODE and CodeX and accelerating healthcare innovation. Part One. Part Two.
- "The Dish on Health IT" Podcast - Episode 11: HL7 CodeX: Transforming Cancer Care and Research