Dr. Christine Brezden-Masley says she has seen a revolution in cancer treatment since she began practising in 2004. Researchers can now identify the genetic drivers of certain cancers, allowing health-care providers to deliver targeted treatment to a subgroup of patients.
“Non-small cell lung cancer, for example, has specific drivers and now we have drugs to target these drivers,” says Dr. Brezden-Masley, medical director of the Cancer Program at Sinai Health in Toronto. “Patients are living years longer with advanced disease.”
These strides in medicine are coming at the same time as advances in artificial intelligence (AI).
Documents like clinical notes, transcription text, and diagnostic reports all hold crucial information that could give health care providers the best available evidence to make treatment decisions. But a lot of this information is trapped in large, siloed repositories.
Health-care technology company Pentavere has a breakthrough AI technology engine called DARWEN™, which rapidly extracts, structures, and analyses complex clinical documentation. This enables health-care providers to better understand real-world patients and make treatment decisions based on large and representative patient populations.
“A clinical trial may provide information based on 1,000 patients, while real-world evidence can include a much larger group of patients,” Dr. Brezden-Masley says. “Or, if a clinical trial was performed in another country, we can look at real-world evidence to see how effective the treatment has been in Canada. For me, it’s about understanding who these patients are, how they’re treated, and whether that treatment is effective and safe. We have a wealth of digital data and Pentavere allows us to efficiently harness its power.”
