Amy Goldberg, Marjorie Joy Katz Dean of Temple University’s Lewis Katz School of Medicine, and Erin Tagai, an assistant professor in the cancer prevention and control research program at Fox Chase Cancer Center, have been awarded $1.36 million by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to implement an electronic symptom monitoring system for patients undergoing cancer treatment. Together, the two will co-lead the PCORI initiative, Implementation of Electronic Patient-Reported Outcomes Monitoring During Cancer Treatment. 

This achievement builds directly on Temple Health’s selection as one of only 42 health systems nationwide to participate in PCORI’s Health Systems Implementation Initiative (HSII). HSII is designed to accelerate the use of practice-changing research in clinical care and reduce the estimated 17-year lag between the publication of research findings and their adoption in everyday practice. 

“Securing Temple Health’s participation in the Health Systems Implementation Initiative with Dr. Claire Raab, president and CEO of Temple Faculty Physicians, was critical, as it created a pathway to serve patients better and for Temple Health to access future PCORI funding opportunities,” Goldberg said. “With this new PCORI grant, we can put evidence-based research into practice by implementing a system that gives patients and clinicians real-time insight into treatment side effects. For individuals undergoing cancer therapy, this has the potential to improve both quality of life and outcomes and it reflects our mission at Katz and across Temple Health and Fox Chase to deliver the highest level of compassionate, patient-centered care to our community.” 

The pre-implementation process for this PCORI contract will begin on Oct. 1, 2025, before it is implemented in October 2026. Once the PCORI initiative is fully launched, the intervention known as Comprehensive Assessment and Reporting Evaluation (CARE) will be in place for cancer patients across Temple Health. 

“We know from research that cancer patients experience a whole range of toxic treatment side effects. And that can escalate over time as patients go through that treatment trajectory,” Tagai said. “And so, this intervention is doing a weekly assessment of patient treatment side effects, which includes everything from sleep to pain, nausea, vomiting and the whole gamut. We also do some periodic assessments of things like financial toxicity. The goal of this is to really identify symptoms in a timelier manner, before it escalates to a patient needing to come into urgent care, be hospitalized or go to the emergency department.” 

The monitoring and assessment of side effects will be built directly into Epic Systems, which keeps track of every patient’s electronic health record. On a weekly basis, patients will be tasked with self-reporting their symptoms—such as fatigue, pain and nausea—directly through Epic, which will allow clinicians to view the information and follow up promptly to address any concerns or needs. 

“We will also have escalations in place to make sure we are monitoring this and that they are completing this process,” Tagai said.  

Ultimately, Tagai said the goal is to have this real-time monitoring system in place across all of Temple Health. 

“To get this award with Dean Goldberg is hugely rewarding for me,” Tagai said. “In my field, we build behavioral interventions, and a lot of it is the early phase. To have an intervention that’s going into Epic and already has clinician buy-in to where it will impact patient care from the get-go is hugely rewarding. It’s exciting to see that this work will actually be impacting patient care and quality of life right away.” 

Temple’s growing momentum with PCORI includes a 2024 award of nearly $1 million to Janet Lee, associate professor of pediatrics at Katz, and Raab to improve antibiotic prescribing for children with acute respiratory tract infections. 

PCORI is an independent, nonprofit organization authorized by Congress with a mission to fund patient-centered comparative clinical effectiveness research that provides patients, their caregivers and clinicians with the evidence-based information they need to make better-informed health and healthcare decisions. 

“PCORI is an amazing foundation, and these are not easy contracts to secure,” Tagai said. “It is refreshing that PCORI is excited for all the work that Temple and Temple Health are doing, and I think there will be opportunities for us to secure additional PCORI funding moving forward.”