Cancer patients spend a lot of time on their care. Meeting with doctors and other members of their health care team, getting labs and other tests, picking up prescriptions, and undergoing treatment all takes time. So does getting to and from each appointment, sitting in the waiting room between each appointment, and so on.
In recent years, cancer researchers have worked to quantify the level of “time toxicity” or time spent commuting to, waiting for, and receiving cancer treatment. Now, for the first time, a pilot study has shown it’s possible to use digital technology to safely reduce the amount of time some patients spend receiving care. With a simple text-messaging system, patients saved more than an hour at each visit captured by the study, which was led by researchers from the Perelman School of…