Cancerwise

How do you make your work more efficient without reinventing the wheel? 

That’s what radiation oncologist Shalin Shah, M.D., was trying to figure out: was there a way to help improve wellness in his area by reducing inefficient processes in the clinic? Could he connect with others who were working on process improvement and apply what they’d learned to his own team?  

Since he works at MD Anderson in Sugar Land full-time, he knew he was less likely to come across projects from other clinical locations by happenstance. 

“I couldn’t find any central repository for improvement projects, but I knew they were happening,” he says. “I asked our librarians if there’d be interest in a collection of process improvement projects and learned they were working on something even bigger.” 

A first-of-its-kind journal

Shah joined with our Research Medical Library and Education and Alumni Relations teams to help form MD Anderson’s first academic journal, Advances in Cancer Education and Quality Improvement (ACE-QI). He serves as deputy editor-in-chief and has seen first-hand the great work happening in different departments across MD Anderson, as well as from multidisciplinary teams across the country. 

“ACE-QI shows the possibilities we have at MD Anderson when we combine our expertise for something greater,” Shah says. “Between our invaluable librarians and expert editorial board, we created the first journal of its kind from a comprehensive cancer center.”