Automate cancer synoptic reporting with HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and JavaScript.

Abstract

Objectives: The College of American Pathologists (CAP) Cancer Protocols are developed to facilitate cancer synoptic reporting. CAP offers these Cancer Protocols in both free printable and commercially licensed electronic formats. Several academic institutions have also implemented these Cancer Protocols as web-based services. Due to financial and technical limitations, many resource-limited pathology laboratories still rely on the free printable Cancer Protocols that involve extensive text editing and secretarial support, and they are error-prone.

This study: implemented low-cost, low-barrier, and flexible electronic CAP Cancer Protocols to automate cancer synoptic reporting.

Methods: For each printable CAP Cancer Protocol, a dynamic data entry form is created using HyperText Markup Language (HTML) with embedded JavaScript, which is then presented in a web browser for pathologists to enter cancer case-specific information. Once the data entry form is complete, the case-specific information entered by the pathologists will be collected, and a synoptic report will be automatically created in the web browser by a companion JavaScript program. The synoptic report can then be copied into the corresponding pathology report.

Results: We implemented the commonly used CAP Cancer Protocols into electronic form using HTML/JavaScript. Using this tool, our pathologist reported at least 50% time savings compared to the previous manual process.

Conclusions: The proposed HTML/JavaScript-based Cancer Protocols are low-cost, low-barrier, and flexible alternatives to current commercially and academically available electronic CAP Cancer Protocols, especially for pathologists working in resource-limited laboratories. The same implementation methods can also be extended to implement international variants of Cancer Protocols, including non-English Cancer Protocols.