Multidisciplinary team meetings - A literature based process analysis

Abstract

Multidisciplinary Team Meetings (MDTM) are conducted to discuss the treatment of one or more patients. This paper discusses MDTM with a focus on tumor treatment and shows workflows in different settings, identifies organizational and technical problems in the MDTM and solutions thereof. It aims to answer the following research questions: (RQ1) What is the current state of the art in MDTM?(RQ2) How are they conducted and what is the variation in different hospital settings? (RQ3) What technical problems and possible solutions thereof exist? This is done by conducting a literature review entailing a forward search of 837 papers and a backward search. The results show that a unified workflow model for MDTM can’t be found since they are highly dependent on institutional and tumor dependent specifics. The identified problems and solutions show a lack of research towards technical solutions and process interoperability. An outlook on extending research in these areas is given.