Radiotherapy for Older Women (ROW)

Following a user-centered approach, we designed, developed, and tested our risk calculator Radiation for Older Women (ROW), a web-based decision aid capable of generating patient-specific radiation therapy outcomes. ROW assesses an individual’s health and tumor characteristics to generate a risk-benefit analysis of radiation therapy to support shared decision making in the clinical setting. Prior to ROW, no breast cancer decision aid has utilized a risk calculator to provide patients with a highly personalized risk-benefit analysis for radiation therapy treatment. In developing ROW, we sought to clarify and simplify the risk-benefit survival analysis for radiation treatment, maximize older women’s usability and navigation of the aid, and facilitate decision-making to more closely align with a patient’s values and preferences.