Digital solutions to deliver genomic medicine: Taking a closer look at what’s under the hood

Digital solutions have been designed as interventions to facilitate the delivery of genomic medicine, which have varied in terms of content, approach, and targets. As part of the National Cancer Institute’s Inherited Cancer Syndrome Collaborative (ICSC), the Automation Working Group aimed to systematically document various digital solutions focused on automating the delivery of pre- and post-test genetic education and counseling, to facilitate comparisons across tools. As part of this effort, the working group quickly recognized that comparisons across tools were limited because of inconsistencies in how developers reported interventions. In efforts to better understand “what’s under the hood,” a detailed reporting checklist was created for tool developers to adopt and apply when reporting intervention details. The purpose of this checklist is to facilitate greater understanding of what is included in a tool, how it was developed and tested, and requirements for implementation and maintenance. Use of this comprehensive checklist by tool developers will provide greater consistency in the reporting of important intervention details, which in turn will facilitate comparisons across tools and enable decision-makers to be more informed on what to adopt for their own settings.
The four working group members on the panel will present details on their digital tools created for hereditary cancer counseling, while applying the reporting checklist; the panel moderator will examine comparisons across presented tools, provide an overview of lessons learned in the digital space, and discuss considerations for both research and practice as the field continues to move towards creating automated solutions for care delivery.

Authors: Deborah Cragun, University of South Florida; Angela Bradbury, University of Pennsylvania; Anita Kinney, Rutgers University; Wendy Kohlmann, University of Utah; Catharine Wang, Boston University