The IBM Cancer Guidelines Navigator, a tool to standardize and raise the quality of cancer care in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Abstract

e18556 Background: In Sub-Saharan Africa, cancer is a significant health burden and is expected to rise. Access to quality healthcare is a challenge exacerbated by the limited number of oncologists and limited access to treatment. Treatment guidelines are difficult to apply and advances in cancer care are difficult to implement. Practitioners and cancer management leaders in Africa recognized the need to develop and implement standardized evidence based management of cancer in Sub-Saharan Africa. Methods: To address these challenges, in 2016 the African Cancer Coalition (organization of more than 40 practicing cancer clinicians Sub-Saharan countries) collaborated with the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) to create the NCCN Harmonized guidelines for Sub-Saharan Africa. These guidelines provide treatment options adapted to Sub-Saharan Africa. For timely and accurate access to these guidelines, IBM Health Corps worked with the coalition and partners to develop the IBM Cancer Guidelines Navigator using the Watson cognitive computing technologies platform. The IBM Cancer Guidelines Navigator is a clinical decision support system (CDSS) that will allow clinicians to input the clinical attributes of a case as defined by the guidelines. The IBM Cancer Guidelines Navigator will output the appropriate recommendations as stipulated by the guidelines with related supportive care information and relevant evidence publications. Results: This Watson powered solution covers 5 cancer types; cervical, Kaposi's sarcoma, B-Cell lymphoma, prostate and breast cancer. The treatment recommendations are multidisciplinary and include surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. The tool will be deployed in 6 countries initially and its use will be measured to see the impact it has in cancer care outcomes. Conclusions: By combining the efforts of harmonizing cancer treatment guidelines and promoting its availability and accessibility in a case-query format, it is expected that programs like this one will have impact in raising the quality of care and standardizing cancer care among a vulnerable population. Further research will be done on outcomes data and presented.