Effective treatment of cancer requires early diagnosis which involves the patient's awareness of the early signs and symptoms, leading to a consultation with a health provider, who would then promptly refer the patient for confirmation of the diagnosis and thereafter treatment. However, this is not always the case because of delays arising from limited skilled manpower and health information management systems that are neither integrated nor organized in their design hence leading to information gap among care groups. Existing methods focus on using accumulated data to support decision making, enhancing the sharing of secondary data while others exclude some critical stakeholders like patient caretakers and administrators thus, leaving an information gap that creates delays and miscommunication during case management. We however notice some similarities between cancer treatment and software engineering information management especially when progress history needs to be maintained (versioning). We analyze the similarities and propose a model for information sharing among cancer care groups using the software engineering principles approach. We model for reducing delays and improving coordination among care groups in cancer case management. Model design was guided by software engineering principles adopted in GitHub version control system for bug fixing in open-source code projects. Any-Logic simulation software was used to mimic the model realism in a virtual environment. Results show that bug resolution principles from software engineering and GitHub version control system can be adopted to coordinate collaboration and information sharing among care groups in a cancer case management environment while involving all stakeholders to improve care treatment outcomes, ensure early diagnosis and increase patient's survival chances.

翻译：癌症的有效治疗需要早期诊断，这涉及患者对早期体征和症状的认知，进而促使患者咨询医疗提供者，医疗提供者随后及时转诊患者以确认诊断并接受治疗。然而，由于熟练人力资源有限以及健康信息管理系统在设计上既未整合也缺乏组织性，导致护理团队间存在信息鸿沟，上述流程并非总能实现。现有方法侧重于利用累积数据支持决策制定、加强二次数据共享，但往往排除了患者看护人员和管理人员等关键利益相关者，从而在病例管理过程中造成信息缺口，引发延误和沟通不畅。然而，我们注意到癌症治疗与软件工程信息管理之间存在相似性，尤其是在需要维护进展历史（版本控制）时。我们分析了这些相似性，并提出了一种基于软件工程原则方法、用于癌症护理团队间信息共享的模型。该模型旨在减少癌症病例管理中的延误并改善护理团队间的协调。模型设计借鉴了GitHub版本控制系统中用于开源代码项目缺陷修复的软件工程原则。我们使用Any-Logic仿真软件在虚拟环境中模拟模型的现实性。结果表明，软件工程中的缺陷解决原则及GitHub版本控制系统可被应用于协调癌症病例管理环境中护理团队间的协作与信息共享，同时纳入所有利益相关者以改善护理治疗效果、确保早期诊断并提高患者生存几率。