Dr Carrie Stricker Explains How Her Clinical Experience Shapes Carevive's Work

Years of experience as an oncology nurse practitioner have underscored the importance of evidence-based resources for both patients and clinicians, says Carrie Stricker, PhD, RN, AOCN, chief clinical officer and co-founder of Carevive.

Transcript (slightly modified)

How has your experience as an oncology nurse provided insight into opportunities for health IT to address cancer care challenges?

One of my favorite questions to answer is how my role as an oncology nurse and nurse practitioner has influenced what we do at Carevive, and it is so central. As I mentioned in today’s presentation, so central that I do continue to practice as an oncology nurse practitioner. And it is in fact out of those clinical experiences and the program development experiences and research that I’ve had in supportive and survivorship care, that came this very clear idea to incorporate the patient voice and the patient’s engagement in their own care.

But then also, as a clinician, one of the things that I struggled with the most was, how do you pull that all together at the point of care, whether that be at an office visit or when you’re taking a phone call from the patient. How do you pull all that rapidly growing evidence together in the seconds you may have, or the minutes you may have?

So out of that was born the idea of these tailored, evidence-based care plans. And what we do at Carevive is we keep a very robust content library of over 25 guidelines, including some of the big players like ASCO and NCCN and Oncology Nursing Society, and others outside of oncology, and we keep that library of evidence that’s both provider- and care team-facing, and patient-facing, up to date. Then use what’s called our rules engine to tailor the display of just the evidence and resources that are needed by that particular patient at the point of care.

So that idea very much grew out of being a busy practicing clinician who had to have the resources at her fingertips, and still does, to not only inform evidence-based practice in my own care practice, but also ensure that my patients and families have access to the same, and to their local resources that are actually meaningful to them. So that’s what we do.