Electronic Registry Systems (ERS)
In Pursuit of Facilitating Better Cancer Care

According to a recent study published by the American Cancer Society, the five-year relative survival rate for all cancers combined has witnessed a significant increase from 33 percent in the early 1960s to 66.5 percent in the last five years. Alternative treatments, the introduction of the latest drugs, and finer cancer classifications have sparked this rapid improvement in the healthcare space. The inevitable consequence of this fast-paced trend is newer regulations around cancer registries. Simultaneously, for any new federal compliance checklist, the state governments introduce their own set of rules as well.

All these regulations create a web of complex compliance protocols in which most healthcare providers are stuck. With the bout of changes in the healthcare sector around cancer registry foreshadowing the eventual replacement of traditional processes and technology, it is imperative for healthcare providers to shift toward a dynamic cloud-based environment in favor of easier compliance with changes in standards and related medical guidelines.

Electronic Registry Systems (ERS), a healthcare technology company based in Cincinnati, OH plays its trump card of packaging best-in-class support, customer education, and a cloud solution that fits the evolving needs of the cancer registry. “ERS has thrived by continuing to innovate over almost 30 years and has most recently been committed to delivering capabilities that leverage registry data for impactful patient benefit”, says Rohit Nayak, CEO, ERS.

The Cancer Registry software technologies started with the basic premise to help their customers address legislative and accreditation compliance needs.

We are building upon our cancer registry expertise to deliver solutions that measurably benefit the cancer patient

While continuing to deliver on these core needs, ERS strives to do more, by accentuating the clinical expertise of the Cancer Tumor Registrar (CTR) to better serve the needs of the Cancer Center and their patients – beyond the narrow objective of meeting accreditation reporting needs. This includes supporting cancer research initiatives and clinical trial programs.

ERS is able to do this because of its advanced cloud solution with inherent lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) that helps both individual hospitals and large enterprise health systems adapt to any new federal and state standards in a timely manner. Every deployment requires integration with some combination of EMR, Pathology, Radiology and other systems involved in cancer patient care. While automation in abstracting and AI-based natural language processing (NLP) are buzz words in the industry today, ERS is focused on leveraging innovation, including NLP to optimize identification of all reportable cancer cases and allow the CTR to focus on broader tasks that leverage their clinical expertise.

“We’ve succeeded by empowering our core user and provided them the flexibility to avoid the typical barriers and inefficiencies of engaging their IT teams”, says Nayak. Importantly, ERS has supplemented the typical technology support by offering a clinical support team consisting of CTRs at no additional cost. Their experience as CTRs helps them in understanding and proactively collaborating to address the common issues that they typically face.

The evolution of advanced radiation therapy and new treatment protocols leveraging genomic insights will inevitably influence new changes in registry standards. ERS has worked to be well-positioned to support these areas through technology innovation in conjunction with strategic partnerships and collaborations. Separately, ERS is also focused on broadening its geographic reach in the growing global cancer registry market.