Dr. Arcadia Cruz | The Clinical Trials Imaging Accuracy Crisis Panel Discussion

Speakers: Dr. Arcadia Cruz, Associate Administrative Director at UCSD Moore's Cancer Center

Dr. Arcadia Cruz: So of course, you know, from an administrative level, from a quality assurance level, we are like, you know, we do have a problem. So yes, you know, we did recognize the problem and then, but at the same time, we needed to find out how we were going to solve it. So of course, we had a lot of issues. So, you know, we were trying to eliminate, you know, all of those electronic spreadsheets, we were trying, you know, to avoid the margin errors errors, you know, from the measurements, from one person to another person, heavy standardizations, you know, really. And we also knew that we needed to improve the accuracy, right? So accuracy for us, especially when you are, when the protocol is so centered to the to the tumor, you know, imaging, we needed to meet those end points And honestly, we were off. Plain and simple, right? So when you look at those errors you are like my goodness, the impact that these errors have, in general, it is really affecting, you know, the people, you know, the impact is on the patient. Yeah! It is right there because if we are not measuring correctly, we are really not testing, you know. the IP properly. We just simply, you know, a change in a measurement can really change, you know, the treatment plans. And, that was one of the things that we were so contentious about, and by introducing, you know, the informatic imaging system. So we actually, you know, end up collaborating a great deal, you know, with the radiology department. And once we started looking at the data itself, we realized that more than 50% of all of our findings had some level of issues, and that was unacceptable. I mean, 50% is huge! We went directly, you know, to the Oncology department and say, we need to collaborate, we have a backlog. This is unacceptable, the accuracy of the measurements are not there. So, by the time when the system was implemented in 2022, then we were able to track, because I mean, Yunu, actually also provided us with a wonderful dashboard that we can make the comparisons and track chronologically, you know what is happening, you know, at the click of a button. So after the implementation, we went from 50% inaccurate measurements & we decreased it to 2%! That was a game changer!