Abstract PS4-11-10: Patient-centric development of shared decision-making aids: The ASSESS online personalized early breast cancer treatment decision support tool and resource website

Abstract People newly diagnosed with breast cancer spend a considerable amount of time researching their diagnosis, treatment options and associated side effects. Even with access to trusted evidence-based information, such as Susan G. Komen’s About Breast Cancer pages (https://www.komen.org/breast-cancer/), patients and doctors may struggle to account for the many factors in an individual's unique diagnosis that influence treatment and outcomes, making it hard to balance the potential benefits of therapy with the risks of side effects on a personalized basis. The discontinuation of the popular Adjuvant! Online tool compounded this challenge, creating a need for a new, publicly available tool to provide survival estimates for the early-stage breast cancer population in the U.S. To address this, Komen collaborated with teams from MD Anderson and Yale Cancer Centers to develop a web-based decision support tool that provides personalized five-year survival estimates for women with early-stage breast cancer. The tool, ASSESS, uses an algorithm developed with U.S.-based SEER data to estimate outcomes for various systemic adjuvant therapies based on an individual’s clinical and pathological characteristics. The ASSESS online tool was designed and built by a multidisciplinary team of experts, including scientists, clinicians, website developers and marketing professionals, using an iterative approach to incorporate feedback from patient advocates and breast cancer clinicians. Initial design requirements for ASSESS included a simple and engaging user interface and being both public-facing and suitable for use in a clinic as a shared decision-making tool. It was designed to be responsive and support use on multiple devices, incorporating best practices for communicating risks, and offering a summary feature to save and print results.Cognitive interviews were conducted with patient advocates and breast cancer clinicians to inform the design of the tool, resulting in changes that made the interface and results output clearer and more accessible to a lay audience. Once finalized, additional usability testing was conducted with patient advocates and breast cancer medical oncologists to ensure the tool was deployed as intended. Komen hosts the ASSESS tool on komen.org and has developed supporting information to empower those newly diagnosed with breast cancer to make informed decisions by offering tailored treatment options, along with education on each treatment option and how treatment combinations may affect survival. Within the tool, links are provided to Komen-generated and expert-vetted information that describes the significance of each input requested (age at diagnosis, menopause status, molecular subtype, tumor size/grade, etc.). By integrating these resources, the tool empowers patients by providing sound and understandable information, enabling them to be actively involved in their treatment decisions. The ASSESS tool, publicly launching later this year, should help providers visually demonstrate different treatment option outcomes and provide links to accessible information that can be shared with patients for each treatment, including details on how it works, its side effects, and references to the associated expert clinical guidelines. Built using a patient-centered approach, the ASSESS tool supports shared decision-making for people with early-stage breast cancer, helping them make the best individual decisions for their treatment and care. Citation Format: B. A. Kerr, J. D. Alexander, H. Zhao, M. Marczyk, L. C. Crocker, A. A. Erwin, E. Kuhn, H. Baker, S. Vaidhyanath, T. Polischuk, K. A. Sabelko, L. Pusztai, S. H. Giordano, R. J. Volk, G. M. Zinser. Patient-centric development of shared decision-making aids: The ASSESS online personalized early breast cancer treatment decision support tool and resource website abstract. In: Proceedings of the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium 2025; 2025 Dec 9-12; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Clin Cancer Res 2026;32(4 Suppl):Abstract nr PS4-11-10.