Health technology may help people with cancer quit smoking

The inclusion of a smoking cessation tool into electronic health records increased self-reported patient quit rates by more than 5 percentage points, according to study results.

Use of Electronic Health Record-Enabled Evidence-Based Smoking Cessation Treatment (ELEVATE) incorporates a module built into EHRs that cues actions by the oncology care team to assess patients’ smoking status, offer advice about smoking cessation, prescribe cessation medications, and offer cessation counseling options to patients who smoke.

The percentage of medical oncology patients with documented smoking cessation increased from 12% to 17.2% after implementation of ELEVATE into EHRs, results published in JNCCN — Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network showed.

Healio spoke with two of the researchers — Alex T. Ramsey, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and Li-Shiun Chen, MD, MPH, ScD, associate professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and leader of the tobacco treatment program at Siteman Cancer Center — about the study results and their potential implications.

Reference:

Ramsey AT, et al. J Natl Compr Canc Netw. 2022;doi:10.6004/jnccn.2021.7333.