Transl Behav Med. 2015 Mar;5(1):53-9. doi: 10.1007/s13142-014-0289-5.

It takes a (virtual) village: crowdsourcing measurement consensus to advance survivorship care planning.

Parry C¹, Beckjord E², Moser RP³, Vieux SN³, Padgett LS³, Hesse BW³.

Author information

1: National Cancer Institute, Rockville, MD USA ; Southern California Permanente Medical Group, Department of Research and Evaluation, Kaiser Permanente, 100 South Los Robles, 2d Floor, Pasadena, CA 91101 USA.
2: University of Pittsburgh Cancer Center, Pittsburgh, PA USA.
3: National Cancer Institute, Rockville, MD USA.

Abstract

We report results from the use of an innovative tool (the Grid-Enabled Measures (GEM) database) to drive consensus on the use of measures evaluating the efficacy and implementation of survivorship care plans. The goal of this initiative was to increase the use of publicly available shared measures to enable comparability across studies. Between February and August 2012, research and practice communities populated the GEM platform with constructs and measures relevant to survivorship care planning, rated the measures, and provided qualitative feedback on the quality of the measures. Fifty-one constructs and 124 measures were entered into the GEM-Care Planning workspace by participants. The greatest number of measures appeared in the domains of Health and Psychosocial Outcomes, Health Behaviors, and Coordination of Care/Transitional Care. Using technology-mediated social participation, GEM presents a novel approach to how we measure and improve the quality of survivorship care.