. 2025 Jan 7;4(1):e000432. doi: 10.1136/bmjonc-2024-000432

Table 2. Summary of specific portal components and functions in cancer care.

Theme	Description	Key points
Supporting cancer care with portal functionality; secure messaging and more	Highlighting the portal functions that patients with cancer are using to manage their care journey through their screening, cancer care, survivorship and end-of-life decision-making	Patients with cancer use secure messaging in the portal to exchange information with clinicians, as well as to seek information, emotional support and shared decision-making⁴⁹,⁵² Care partners can also benefit from using portals for managing care via the secure messaging functionality⁵³
Trends in recent telehealth adoption	Portal-hosted telehealth use has increased in patients with cancer through COVID-19, but disparities in use persist	Telehealth, delivered through the portal, experienced a surge in adoption through the COVID-19 pandemic^{57 59} Patients reported a similar level of satisfaction between care delivered in-person versus telehealth and acknowledge there are benefits such as eliminating the need to travel for care⁶¹ Male, non-white, Spanish-speaking, uninsured and unmarried patients are less likely to use telehealth⁴¹
Patients with cancer and open notes	Identifying the effects of having visit notes available to patients in the portal	Patients with cancer expressed benefits from reading the notes that their clinician writes for them after their visit^{51 62} Through this practice of open notes, the notes for patients with cancer are becoming longer but they are also becoming more readable⁶⁴
Test result and other health information access in the portal	Identifying recent changes from 21st Century Cures to immediate test result access and other information access for patients with cancer using the portal	Patients with cancer review results as they become available, and many say that they enjoy doing so^{65 66 73} Many patients report that they would not like to receive a cancer diagnosis through the portal^{71 72} The majority of patients and clinicians alike believe that routine test results should continue to be released immediately through the portal^{66 67} Most patients are interested in receiving results through the portal and feel that it benefits them⁷³,⁷⁷ However, results may be difficult to interpret, and result interpretability is a space for improvement^{27 81 82 84}