A new digital tool rapidly identifies patients with serious side effects from immunotherapy

Researchers in Australia have developed a digital tool capable of rapidly and accurately identifying cancer patients who develop a severe adverse reaction following immunotherapy, according to a recent study cited by Agerpres, sourcing the information from Xinhua.

The team at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne has created what they call a "digital phenotype", validated by clinicians. This is a computerised algorithm that analyses information from patients' electronic medical records to detect colitis associated with immunotherapy treatments.

This form of colitis is an intestinal inflammation that can occur in up to 50% of patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors, a type of immunotherapy used in oncology.

Jasmine Teng, an infectious diseases specialist at the Melbourne centre and lead author of the research, explains that the new tool replaces the manual review of cases — a labour-intensive process — with a rapid and repeatable method that is able to identify patients affected by colitis with a high degree of accuracy.

"This tool represents an important step in how we can harness the potential of data that already exists within our health system," said Jasmine Teng.

She added: "If we can identify biomarkers that predict who will develop immunotherapy-associated colitis, then we can work with patients and their medical teams to personalise the immunotherapy regimen or to improve the early management of this side effect."

According to the researcher, more effective, large-scale identification of patients who develop this complication will pave the way for research and clinical insights that were previously impossible to achieve.