Pittsburgh, PA (PRWEB) August 04, 2015
As part of its ongoing commitment to deliver high quality and cost-efficient care to patients with cancer, the University of Chicago Medicine (UCM) is leveraging its extensive physician expertise to translate evidence-based practice into measurable clinical pathways—known as UCM Pathways. These pathways can help UCM oncologists improve cancer care by guiding them in developing a customized treatment plan for each patient's specific type and stage of cancer.
As it launches this transformative initiative to advance patient care, UCM selected Pittsburgh-based Via Oncology for its innovative decision-support pathways software and reporting tools. As a physician-led clinical pathways company, Via Oncology offers services to improve the quality, safety, efficiency, and outcomes of care for cancer patients at medical and radiation oncology centers worldwide.
In addition to Via Pathways, its own national clinical pathways, Via Oncology provides a proven online pathways platform, the Via Portal, to help support cancer centers, such as UCM, that are developing and maintaining their own unique pathways content.
"Through our Via Portal, UCM will be able to deliver its pathways as patient-specific point of care guidance to its 38 oncologists," says Kathy Lokay, President and CEO of Via Oncology. "Quarterly updates will be made through our PathBuildR content authoring tool which allows for nimble, accurate and rapid updates to the UCM Pathways for newly available treatments and published clinical trials."
UCM will use Via Portal's clinical trial matching feature to promote the awareness of promising clinical trials for each of UCM's patients with cancer, says Lokay.
"We are excited to be working with a National leader in oncology care pathways," says gastrointestinal cancer specialist Blase Polite, M.D., associate professor of medicine at UCM. "Via Oncology is building a strong track record of working with leading NCI Comprehensive Cancer Centers who care for a unique set of complex cancer patients and who have robust clinical trial programs testing the next generation of cancer treatments."
Dr. Polite adds that Via's collaborative approach and software allows centers like UCM to measure and demonstrate to payers the quality of care they provide to their patients as well as to build individualized care plans and treatment summaries for patients and their families.
"We look forward to collaborating with Via Oncology in their ongoing expansion of their Via Portal to support UCM's Pathways in other specialties, survivorship and supportive care," says Dr. Polite.
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About Via Oncology
Via Oncology, LLC, is the cancer value management solution for medical, radiation and surgical oncologists. The Via Pathways span the continuum of cancer care including workup, diagnostics, treatment, symptom management, survivorship and advance care planning. Via Oncology also supports its cancer center customers through quality reporting, patient education, clinical trial accrual support and medical home tools. The Via Pathways are licensed by over 1,100 oncology providers in 20 states in community, hospital and academic based cancer centers. Learn more at http://www.viaoncology.com.
About University of Chicago Medicine
The University of Chicago Medicine & Biological Sciences is one of the nation's leading academic medical institutions. It comprises the Pritzker School of Medicine, a top 10 medical school in the nation; the University of Chicago Biological Sciences Division; and the University of Chicago Medical Center, which recently opened the Center for Care and Discovery, a $700 million specialty medical facility. Twelve Nobel Prize winners in physiology or medicine have been affiliated with the University of Chicago Medicine. Visit its research blog at sciencelife.uchospitals.edu and its newsroom at http://www.uchospitals.edu/news or find them at @UChicagoMed or facebook.com/UChicagoMed.

