Researchers at the National Centre for Infections in Cancer at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne are developing a digital surveillance platform to monitor immune-related adverse events during cancer treatments.
Recently, a Peter Mac research team introduced what could be the first digital tool in Australia that can quickly identify cancer patients who have developed immune-related colitis, one of the most common side effects of immunotherapy treatment.
The team developed a digital phenotype, a reproducible computer algorithm using EMR data, to assist with automatically identifying affected patients with high accuracy.
It detects several features, including pathology results, procedures (whether colonoscopy or sigmoidoscopy), imaging reports (mentions of colitis in CT or PET scans), along with treatment information, such as medication orders and administrations of steroids or immunosuppressants.
Besides helping identify patients and understand the incidence of immune-related colitis, the research opens opportunities to help clinicians tailor patients' immunotherapy regimen or improve side effect management.
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