By Rebecca Maniago, PharmD, BCOP, Senior Director, Oncology Care Pathway, Viz.ai
In today’s oncology landscape, clinicians are not just fighting cancer — they’re being inundated with an avalanche of therapies, tools, platforms, and protocols. These better and newer options should benefit both patients and providers, but the sheer volume can lead to confusion and fatigue. But for the oncologists, nurses, and care coordinators tasked with integrating these advancements into day-to-day workflows, think EHR overload.
Modern oncology professionals are expected to be data scientists, navigators, and decision-makers, all while maintaining compassionate patient care. It’s not a lack of innovation that’s the issue — it’s the overwhelming pace of it. The sheer volume of treatment options, clinical pathways, and administrative requirements is straining even the most sophisticated cancer centers.
AI presents an opportunity to simplify the chaos — to cut through the noise and empower oncology teams with intelligent, real-time tools that streamline decisions and accelerate patient access to life-extending therapies.
Let’s look at what’s holding clinicians back today — and how AI can help them move forward.
Nearly 50% of physicians’ working hours in certain specialties are consumed by EHR-related tasks rather than direct patient care. This includes navigating clunky interfaces, documenting notes, handling compliance, and ensuring proper coding.1
While not fully quantifiable today, physicians are working after-hours—weekends, nights—on EHR documentation. Often dubbed “pajama time,” this invisible workload contributes heavily to clinician burnout and attrition.
The infrastructure strain is palpable across institutions:
These aren’t rare exceptions—they’re daily disruptions affecting thousands of patient visits and introducing critical delays in treatment pathways.
A recent article published in Nature Cancer (2025)2 further reinforces this widening gap. Despite the rise of personalized and targeted oncology treatments, researchers found that systemic delivery issues—including slow adoption of biomarker testing, unclear reimbursement pathways, and fragmented care infrastructures—continue to hinder effective implementation.
Highlighting a critical paradox: although precision oncology tools and clinical knowledge have expanded dramatically, patient access to these innovations remains inconsistent and uneven, especially across community and underserved care settings. This underscores the importance of integrating clinical decision support tools and workflow automation into everyday oncology practice—not just in academic centers but across the full spectrum of care environments.
According to the Johnson & Johnson Oncology Care Index3, 73% of surveyed healthcare professionals report a gap between the availability of innovative treatments and their implementation in clinical care. Additionally, 3 in 4 oncologists say they feel overwhelmed by the pace of new treatment development, and 70% struggle with the complexity of evolving treatment guidelines.
The top barriers contributing to this disconnect include staffing shortages, fragmented systems, and a lack of time to keep up with innovation — all challenges that intelligent technology could help alleviate.
This growing innovation-implementation gap underscores the urgent need for streamlined infrastructure, digital workflows, and AI-powered decision support tools to help close the divide between what’s possible and what’s practiced.
AI should not be seen as a cold replacement for human expertise — but as a powerful co-pilot that restores focus to what matters: the patient. The vision is not just faster workflows, but smarter, more human care.
By automating repetitive tasks, surfacing key data points in real-time, and reducing the burden of administrative overload, AI tools can allow oncologists to do what they were trained for: deliver nuanced, emotionally intelligent care.
At Viz.ai, we’re making the vizion real.
Cancer care is inherently complex, and oncology care pathways remain fragmented and highly manual — often leading to delays and variability in care that can compromise patient outcomes. The Viz Oncology Suite addresses this critical gap by delivering an end-to-end AI solution that streamlines coordination, surfaces patients earlier, and helps ensure that every patient has timely access to the care they need.
The real opportunity in oncology isn’t just in the data—it’s in what we do with it. AI can help us reclaim the most valuable asset in cancer care: time. Time for patients to be seen sooner. Time for clinicians to think more clearly. Time to make each encounter more meaningful.
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