MELBOURNE, June 17 (Xinhua) -- Researchers in Australia have developed a digital tool that can rapidly and accurately identify cancer patients who have developed a serious side effect from immunotherapy, a study has shown.
Australia's Peter MacCallum Cancer Center created a clinician-verified "digital phenotype," a computer algorithm using electronic medical record data to detect immune-related colitis, an inflammatory bowel condition affecting up to 50 percent of patients receiving immune checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy, according to a Peter Mac statement released on Wednesday.
Lead researcher Jasmine Teng, infectious diseases physician at Peter Mac, said the tool replaces labor-intensive manual case reviews with a rapid, reproducible method that identifies affected patients with high accuracy.
"This tool represents a significant step forward in how we can harness the power of data that already exists within our health system," Teng said.
"If we can identify the biomarkers that predict who will develop immune-related colitis, we can work with patients and their treating teams to tailor their immunotherapy regimen or improve early management of this side effect," she said.
More efficiently identifying which patients experience immune-related colitis at scale enables new research and clinical insights previously impossible, Teng added. ■
