Thyroid cancer is one of the more common cancers globally, and for most patients, the prognosis is generally favorable with timely and effective treatment. The usual course involves surgery to remove the thyroid gland, followed by radioactive iodine therapy to eliminate any remaining cancerous cells. However, for a subset of patients, the story is far more complicated. When thyroid cancer no longer responds to radioiodine therapy, a condition known as radioiodine-refractory differentiated thyroid cancer, the outlook becomes significantly more daunting. These patients face limited treatment options and a much grimmer prognosis.

While checklists are often a vital tool for medical procedures, there has so far been little guidance on how they should be designed and applied in real medical scenarios. Now, a team including Dr. Alex Chaparro, a researcher at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, has developed an algorithm which can help medical experts to decide when a checklist is the best-suited tool for the task at hand; and if so, which type of checklist should be applied, based on the user’s technical experience. The approach could ultimately help complex, potentially urgent medical procedures to become safer and more efficient.