Dr Robert Daly on Benefits of At-Home Lung Cancer Treatment

Robert Daly, MD, MBA, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discussed at-home lung cancer treatments and predicted how it and its benefits will continue to evolve.

Daly co-chaired The American Journal of Managed Care^®’s Institute for Value-Based Medicine^® held on November 2 in New York City, where presenters discussed at-home and remote cancer treatments. He is a thoracic oncologist who specializes in lung cancer, as well as a health services researcher interested in innovative cancer care systems.

Transcript

Could you explain how at-home or remote treatment methods have affected your delivery of care to patients?

A prime example of these new treatment methods is a pilot study we have ongoing right now at my institution where we're looking at the adoption of extended dosing of immunotherapy for patients with lung cancer. How we deliver that safely is by scheduling a televisit in between their infusional doses in order to do a toxicity check and ensure that they're tolerating the treatments safely.

These visits would otherwise have required those patients to come into the clinic in order to have that done. Now, we're able to do labs at the home and a televisit and provide that same service to ensure that they're getting their care safely.

So, what does that mean for patients? It means rather than having to come in every 3 weeks, they can now come in every 6 weeks. For patients who are working, for patients who have travel plans, for patients who have dependents that they're taking care of, this has had a huge impact on their quality of life.

In the future, what innovations or changes in lung cancer treatment do you anticipate to have the most significant impact on patient outcomes?

Well, one area where I'm really excited, and that ties together well with the virtual care, is subcutaneous immunotherapies. Now, there's the opportunity to potentially provide these lifesaving treatments for patients in the home because the delivery of those treatments now does not require an IV infusion.

So, that's a really exciting area where we could pair televisits, home labs, and subcutaneous injections to potentially untether patients from the cancer center and provide increased access to these treatments for patients not only nationally, but globally, as well.