Using crowdsourcing approach to obtain real-world insights to improve access to cancer medicine.

Abstract

135 Background: Barriers of access to cancer medicines vary tremendously among practice settings. Our initiative is aimed at obtaining insights about the challenges and potential solutions to improve access to cancer medicine from a wide range of stakeholders and front-line practitioners across the world. Methods: We used a two-step approach. The first step is to convene a panel of distinguished international experts to identify key stakeholders and pertinent issues to cover during crowdsourcing process. The second step is to run a crowdsourcing (Hackathon) through a virtual platform (Within3, Lakewood, Ohio, USA). The platform was divided into four rooms, each moderated by one expert posing a series of questions related to the following themes: Access to affordable quality medicines; reliable, verifiable, and sustainable supply chain; guidelines and the rationale use of medicines; and measuring and validating quality standards. Results: Between June 8 and July 8, 2022, 78 participants from 33 countries joined the platform. Participants responded to questions by reporting local/ regional experiences and suggested solutions. Participants were able to comment on others’ posts or like a specific comment. The contributions revealed the disparities in access to medicines and highlighted the needs for cooperation across borders and among healthcare systems and stakeholder organizations and emphasized the needs to improve communications, education and accurate data generation and experience sharing. Questions that generated the most responses related to access to quality essential medicines (n=25) and the use of treatment guidelines based on essential cancer medicines (n=22). Solutions that generated the most “likes” related to actions that can be taken to make medicines more affordable and accessible and actions to engage diverse audiences in efforts to improve access to medicines. The importance of creating practical and relevant guidelines was clearly highlighted. Conclusions: Crowdsourcing is an innovative and practical approach to gain insights from stakeholders of different backgrounds professionally, geographically and practice settings. It creates an opportunity for interested individuals to participate in asynchronous ways in easily accessible platform at their convenience over extended period of time. A follow-up plan is underway to crystalize the most practical next steps to build on the complied information.