The latest cancer statistics show promising advances in decreasing mortality related to cancer. However, the number of patients living with cancer will grow significantly in the near future due to the fact that one in two people will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime, while at the same time the average life expectancy increases.
As far as breast cancer is concerned, according to the CONCORD-3 study (data from 2010 to 2014), the 5-year net survival age-adjusted probability in all adults, in the 28 countries of the EU, ranges from 79% in Croatia to 93% in Cyprus. In 2018, the 5-year prevalence for breast cancer was in the absolute number of 2,054,887, from a total of 12,132,287 total cancer prevalence.
Regarding prostate cancer, the approximate number of new cases in the EU in 2015 is about 365,000 and is the most frequently diagnosed type of cancer in men. The incidence rates (ASR: age-adjusted rate on the European standard population) in the EU range from ASR 175 in Sweden to ASR 34 in Greece. The 5-year prevalence of prostate cancer in the EU is about 1,300,000, while at the same time survival has raised in all the EU countries with the highest increase monitored in the Eastern countries. The introduction and wide use of Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) testing and diagnostic procedures such as biopsy have changed the distribution of the disease.
According to the numbers reported before, breast and prostate cancer survivorship represent a huge health problem for European countries. Physical, social, and emotional scars could compromise return to everyday life. Different studies showed that almost a third of cancer survivors experienced changes in their work situation after treatment.
Motivated by the above, the aim of ASCAPE was to build an open Artificial Intelligence (AI) infrastructure for cancer patient support where valuable patient data-derived knowledge in the form of Deep Learning models from healthcare providers across can be collected and shared through the cloud while advanced technological means ensure patient data remain confidential. This data-derived knowledge is made available to doctors to aid them in their decisions and help provide a better Quality of Life trajectory to their patients. ASCAPE challenges the Iron Triangle of Health orthodoxy by offering opportunities for both Quality of Care and Access to Care to improve while the Cost of Care decreases.
Results from ASCAPE clinical pilots showed a high level of acceptance of the proposed AI- based interventions among both patients and physicians. Continuous data collection, combined with ASCAPE’s ability to provide the most relevant information through an intuitive UI to clinicians at their fingertips, proved that can lead to significant improvements in both the quality and speed of their clinical decisions. In a similar manner, the predictive power of the data and its analyzes proved that is more than feasible to reduce the occurrence of health disorders and comorbidities that in turn could affect the well-being of cancer patients.
