Information-sharing is a major focus of the ongoing European Society for Radiotherapy & Oncology meeting in Barcelona, which lasts from April 24 to 28. As expected, lots of new data was shared and studies presented, but the importance of actually sharing data in real time and how to do it efficiently is also being discussed.
"We are gaining tremendously valuable knowledge in the Netherlands that changes the way radiotherapy patients are treated in Australia today," said Andre Dekker of the Maastro radiology clinic in the Netherlands, in a release. The clinic has developed cancer prediction models. Anyone with access to the Internet can use them to aid in clinical decision making.
For instance, doctors can enter 5 patient-specific variables into the boxes on the website to receive an estimated probability of surviving non-small cell lung cancer at two years following radiotherapy treatment. The given inputs are a patient's gender, score on the World Health Organization Performance Scale prior to treatment, gross tumor volume, the number of positive lymph node stations and forced expiratory volume in one second. The prediction tool was created using the data from 407 lung cancer patients treated at the clinic.
The website also contains prediction models for surviving rectal, head & neck and endometrial cancers.
"In radiation oncology we have the opportunity to learn both through clinical trials and through data mining," said Dr. Vincenzo Valentini, who practices in Rome, in a release. "We have our daily practice stored on computer systems and this enables us to learn rapidly and implement greater knowledge in all our systems."
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| The Velocity clinical intelligence platform--Courtesy of Varian (click to enlarge) |
The release is from Varian Medical Systems, maker of the Velocity clinical intelligence platform for gleaning information from the data spread across different systems and points in time. The company says it can map imaging and treatment information and integrate it into a comprehensive dashboard for clinical decision-making.
Big Data also contributed to some of the other key takeaways from the meeting, such as a cancer registry study which found that post-operative radiotherapy can lower the risk of the reoccurrence of prostate cancer following radical prostatectomy. Worryingly, the data found that less than 10% of patients received radiotherapy within 6 months of the surgery.
Meanwhile, another study found that increasing the dose of radiotherapy in children with intracranial ependymoma, a cancer of the central nervous system, can improve their chances of survival.
Big Data and software are critical components of radiotherapy, but hardware still plays a role, even in the information age. Varian showcased its investigational VitalBeam system radiotherapy platform, which it says can deliver therapy with greater precision, speed and safety. The company said it will be launched once a European CE mark or FDA approval is received.
- read the Varian Big Data release | here's another about the VitalBeam