Building on research supported by The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research and Cancer Research UK, the collaboration aims to address the problems of fragmented or siloed data and disconnected patient information, which is challenging for clinicians to manage effectively and can prevent cancer patients receiving optimal treatment.
“Thanks to ever-improving technologies, we now generate increasing amounts of complex data for each patient with cancer,” said Professor Richard Gilbertson, Director of the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre, and Head of the Department of Oncology at the University of Cambridge. "These include multiple imaging scans, digital pathology, genomic data, advanced blood tests and treatment information. Bringing all this data together to make precise and informed decisions for patients can be hard. We often do this inefficiently and miss important connections between the data."
This new application would be designed using advanced software engineering and machine learning methods to integrate a variety of patient data including clinical, imaging and genomic data - from diagnosis through every stage of treatment - into one single location. The aim is to offer all medical teams involved in a patient’s cancer care - medical oncologists, clinical oncologists, surgeons, radiologists, pathologists, clinical nurse specialists and more - simultaneous access to the necessary data and information to allow the medical team to plan the best, most personalised treatment for each of their patients.
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Credit: geralt
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge