A digitalized nosocomial risk management framework during the COVID-19 pandemic: practice-based insights from a tertiary cancer hospital in Southwest China

BackgroundCancer patients represent a particularly vulnerable population during infectious disease outbreaks, with substantially elevated risk of infection and mortality compared to the general population. Comprehensive nosocomial risk management frameworks for specialized oncology hospitals remain under-documented in the literature.MethodsThis community case study describes a comprehensive, multi-component epidemic risk management program implemented at Sichuan Cancer Hospital—the largest tertiary cancer hospital in Southwest China—from January 2020 to September 2022. The program integrated seven management pillars with a digital risk-reporting pipeline built on Questionnaire Star® and R programming language.ResultsOver the 32-month study period, the hospital achieved a 98% staff vaccination rate with 95% booster coverage. Following its deployment in August 2022, during the final weeks of the study period, the digital reporting system processed risk-investigation data and generated actionable summary tables within 5 min of submission. No nosocomial COVID-19 cases were detected among patients or staff during the surveillance period.ConclusionThe experience demonstrates that systematic integration of management innovations with digital technologies can support hospital infection prevention even under extreme epidemiological pressure; the absence of detected nosocomial cases, however, cannot be causally attributed to the program alone given concurrent community-level restrictions. The framework’s pathogen-agnostic architecture supports transferability to future respiratory virus epidemics in cancer hospital settings.