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Over 8 million patients experiencing cancer face health-related social needs (HRSN) challenges, such as food, housing, and financial insecurity, that directly impact their health outcomes. While patients may participate in the screening of unmet social needs with their healthcare provider, it is not well understood if patients will self-screen and act on referrals to community services. Therefore, we conducted a mixed-methods study in which we pilot-tested a patient-centered oncology-focused digital social care referral platform, ConnectedNest.

Our results summarize several key findings useful for patients, clinical teams, and staff of CBOs when designing a social care referral platform. Our user testing highlighted that patient-facing interfaces offer tremendous opportunities to allow patients to be the leader of the social care referral process. CBOs have varying needs that must be addressed, and providing CBO staff with opportunities to connect with patients is critical. Finally, health care teams have more structured workflows. Integration within the electronic health record system provides opportunities for health care staff to support their patients more easily given these barriers.

Given the dramatic growth in the financial burden of cancer care over the past decades,
individuals with cancer are increasingly susceptible to developing social needs (e.g., housing instability and food insecurity) and experiencing an adverse impact of these needs on care management and health outcomes.

However, resources required to connect individuals with needed social and community services typically exceed the available staffing within clinical teams. Using input from focus groups, key informant interviews, user experience/user interface testing, and a multidisciplinary community advisory board, we developed a new technology solution, ConnectedNest, which connects individuals in need to community based organizations (CBOs) that provide services through direct and/or oncology team referrals, with interfaces to support all three groups (patients, CBOs, and oncology care teams).

After prototype development, we conducted usability testing, with participants noting the importance of the technology for filling a current gap in screening and connecting individuals with cancer with needed social and community services. We employ a patient-empowered approach that engages the support of an individual’s healthcare team and community organizations.

Future work will examine the integration and implementation of ConnectedNest for oncology patients, oncology care teams, and cancer-focused CBOs to build capacity for effectively addressing distress in this population.

XanthosHealth is HONORED to be the WINNER of Minnesota Cup’s Impact Ventures Division. Congratulations to all, and MANY THANKS to all who have supported and encouraged us on this journey! We are building a Community Approach to Facing Cancer one step at a time.

Thank you CancerX for letting XanthosHealth be a member of your inaugural class!! This is another major milestone for XanthosHealth. We graduated from the CancerX Moonshot accelerator after four months of intensive learning developing growth strategy to scale our innovative digital social care referral platform! We are grateful to CancerX Moonshot and its partners, MassChallenge, Moffitt […]

XanthosHealth is excited to receive an almost $1.9 million STTR Phase 2 grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI). This two-year project, ConnectedNest: a digital platform connecting individuals with cancer to social care”, is in partnership with University of Minnesota and will enhance ConnectedNest’s technical features, and conduct a randomized clinical trial recruiting patients from […]