UCSF Breast Care Center: Enhancing Healthcare Research with Digital Engagement Platform

The Athena Breast Health Network is a collaboration of breast cancer experts, healthcare providers, researchers, and patient advocates at five University of California Medical Centers and the Sanford Health System, a rural healthcare system in the Midwest region of the United States. Established in 2009, Athena has assessed breast cancer risk as part of the standard of care for over 150,000 women. It is currently conducting the WISDOM Study, a clinical trial comparing personalized breast cancer screening to standard annual screening in 100,000 women.

The Athena Breast Health Network, a collaboration of breast cancer experts, healthcare providers, researchers, and patient advocates, was conducting the WISDOM Study, a clinical trial comparing personalized breast cancer screening to standard annual screening in 100,000 women. The study aimed to determine whether personalized screening that incorporates individual risk assessments is as safe and effective as the standard approach. However, the team faced a challenge in securely and conveniently providing access to mammograms and other breast health information. Additionally, they needed to improve study recruitment and retention, as the process of requesting records by phone or mail was inconvenient for participants.

The Athena team, already a customer of Life Image for medical image exchange, adopted Mammosphere, a patient engagement platform that stores breast health information and mammograms in a secure, online location. Mammosphere, powered by Life Image and running its frontend app on Google Cloud, uses App Engine to scale easily on a fully managed, serverless application platform. This solution made it more convenient for women to participate in the study, as they could simply select their mammography facility from a dropdown list and request which records they wanted, over which time period, and where they wanted those records to be sent. Life Image is also developing new features for Mammosphere that will help UCSF and other customers analyze breast imaging data within and across studies, using Google Cloud APIs and managed services.

• The implementation of Mammosphere has not only made it more convenient for women to participate in the WISDOM Study, but it has also improved the study's recruitment and retention rates. The platform's secure and efficient storage and sharing of mammogram data have enhanced the study's data collection process. Furthermore, the new features being developed for Mammosphere by Life Image, using Google Cloud APIs and managed services, are expected to provide groundbreaking analytics opportunities. These will enable UCSF and other customers to analyze breast imaging data within and across studies, potentially driving better patient outcomes and improving breast cancer screening processes.

• 18,000+ women have joined the WISDOM Study

• The study aims to reach 100,000 participants

• False positive and recall rates are 260 percent higher for patients without access to prior mammograms