Cancer informatics, as an interdisciplinary field, integrates data analysis, information technology, and computational biology to advance our comprehension of cancer, enhance diagnostics, formulate effective treatments, and ultimately mitigate the burden of cancer.
This article investigates the effective use of data and cloud technologies for the enhancement of cancer research and patient care in the African context. Additionally, it scrutinizes the challenges and future trajectories of cancer informatics, emphasizing its potential to revolutionize cancer care. Given the complex nature of cancer, which encompasses numerous genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors, cancer informatics employs advanced technologies and computational tools to derive meaningful insights from extensive datasets.
Through the integration of diverse data sources and the application of cutting-edge analytical techniques, cancer informatics endeavors to expedite cancer research and ameliorate patient outcomes.
Cancer, which is a complex disease characterized by abnormal cell growth and spread, presents a substantial global health risk. Medical research attributes its complexity to factors like genetic predispositions, environmental exposures, and lifestyle choices.
Globally, cancer has a significant impact, with around 19.3 million new cases and 10 million deaths reported in 2020 alone. In Africa, The World Health Organization reports approximately 1.1 million new cancer cases each year, resulting in about 700,000 deaths. The WHO also predicts that cancer-related deaths in Africa will surpass the mortality rate of malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV combined by 2030.
This alarming statistics necessitates the crucial need to priorities cancer research, prevention, and treatment efforts. Recent scientific and technological advances have shown the potential of data and cloud technologies to improve Cancer Research and Patient Care in Africa. Progress recorded in this pursuit has significantly shown that working with cancer research data in a cloud environment offers undeniable advantages. Cloud computing enables researchers to access extensive datasets, exceeding petabytes, encompassing diverse biomedical information such as genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, transcriptomic, along with clinical and epidemiological data.
With these latest developments, Medical researchers are now equipped with the necessary power and resources to drive in-depth, complex analysis using established workflows and tools. As a result, cloud computing is proving especially useful in accelerating cancer research for precision medicine.
A testament to the aforementioned is made evident in a report by researchers at the National Cancer Institute (Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology). They stated, “Our team at NCI, along with researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital, recently built a biomedical informatics pipeline leveraging two cloud-based research data ecosystems—NCI’s Cancer Research Data Commons (CRDC) and NIH’s ‘All of Us’ Research Program. Our pipeline integrated publicly available datasets, interoperability standards, and data science approaches, which were then applied to several scenarios in precision medicine and precision oncology.
“Indeed, cloud computing enabled us to conduct analyses on hundreds of thousands of patients, and those calculations took only a few months, not years, to both perform and publish.”
It is imperative to note that cancer treatment is inherently multifaceted, and this requires the collaboration of diverse specialists across various departments to address the complexities inherent in the management of individual patients.
This is where cancer informatics makes the difference as it assumes a central role in the comprehensive cancer care continuum, spanning prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up, by fostering seamless coordination among caregivers and enhancing the efficacious management of patient information.
With the aforementioned, significant volumes of data encompassing demographic characteristics, clinical conditions, cancer site specifics, tissue profiles, treatment regimens, outcomes, pathology reports, and radiology findings are systematically generated from diverse sources, including electronic health records, cancer registry systems, and genomic studies.
Effectively harnessing this data for strategic planning and policy formulation in the realms of cancer prevention, diagnosis, and treatment mandates the adoption of technological infrastructures endowed with capabilities for expeditious storage, processing, integration, and analysis of this information with a discernible emphasis on both speed and quality. In this context, cloud computing emerges as a singular solution, affording a secure environment conducive to the proficient management of extensive healthcare datasets.
Cloud computing furnishes users with on-demand access to a shared pool of customizable resources, encompassing networks, servers, storage, applications, and services, thereby minimizing requisite management efforts and interactions with service providers.
The on-demand, adaptive, mobile, reliable, flexible, and distributed attributes inherent in computing and resource pooling within the ambit of cancer care facilitate not only the adept management of cancer-related data and collaborative care but also serve to expedite data analysis processes while concurrently mitigating associated costs.
According to available statistics from the National Library of Medicine, utilizing data extracted from WHO Cancer Country Profiles, it is reported that in Africa, approximately 1.1 million new cancer cases (with 95% uncertainty intervals of 1.0 – 1.3 million) and 711,429 deaths (ranging from 611,604 to 827,547) occurred due to neoplasms in 2020.
The data explains the pressing need for a comprehensive approach to cancer control and management on the continent. This approach should include initiatives such as increasing cancer awareness, implementing primary and secondary prevention measures, addressing risk factors, enhancing cancer infrastructure, and ensuring timely treatment.
The high cancer mortality rates in Africa emphasize the urgency of prioritizing early detection, timely treatment, and the development of a robust cancer infrastructure. By doing so, it is anticipated that these concerted efforts can significantly impact and reduce the unfortunate figures. This underscores the necessity for intentional and substantial investment in the field of cancer care to achieve the desired outcomes for the African continent.
Given the high and ever increasing rate of cancer cases in Africa, the continent has the most to gain from implementation of data science for health care and research. With a population expected to reach 2.5 billion people or 25% of the world’s population by 2050, data science technologies would enable African countries to leapfrog legacy healthcare systems and technologies, and dramatically transform lives on the continent.
Even though Africa currently constitutes 17% of the world’s population, it bears 25% of the world’s disease burden, has only 3% of the world’s healthcare workers, and 2% of global health research output. This is due to limited infrastructure, lack of trained personnel, poor funding, economic and social instability which hinder access to clinical and preventive services.
African researchers, institutions, governments, and the private sector are actively utilizing data science for research, discoveries, and healthcare. An example is the collaboration between Microsoft South Africa and NPO Living with Cancer, where they are working together to enhance South Africa’s first patient-led cancer registry using Microsoft Azure’s cloud computing platform.
This partnership enables individuals to easily and securely upload their pathology reports and other documents to the site, facilitating verification by the National Cancer Registry (NCR). The NCR relies on patient-reported data for accurate incidence analysis and reporting the cancer burden in South Africa.
Another initiative involves the collaboration between the Decuir organization and the Rwandan government to establish Hurone AI, a medical technology startup powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS). Hurone AI has developed a digital application called “Gukiza,” meaning “to heal” in Kinyarwanda, a commonly spoken language in Rwanda. This application facilitates frequent communication between doctors and patients through auto-generated text messages about symptoms and side effects.
Hurone AI’s web app proves valuable for local oncologists, providing a means to quickly adjust treatment plans based on reported side effects. The messaging system allows doctors to address new symptoms remotely or schedule in-person appointments as needed, offering a practical solution for healthcare challenges in Rwanda.
While other nations in Africa continue to embrace this new technology, a cross sectional survey about Digital Health in oncology in Africa revealed that digital health projects in oncology in Africa are mostly isolated pilots, that they provide limited features and use simple technologies e.g. SMS and image sharing. While the report stated that digital health interventions in oncology in Africa are at early maturity stages, it however submitted that the development so far is promising.
Also, another study why acknowledging these promising development stated that examples of data science applications already in use in Africa include teleradiology and telepathology, patients’ navigation and clinical decision support (CDS) tools, integration of genomics data into public health and clinical care, and cancer screening. However, most of these applications were designed, developed, tested, and validated outside Africa. They may not have been adequately evaluated in African populations and may be insensitive to local contexts and health priorities.
This necessitates the need for proper funding to develop and implement technologies that are relevant and adapted to the contexts in which they would be used in Africa. Already, several initiatives are being implemented in Africa to develop data science health research capacity, build infrastructure, implement training programs, organize scientific conferences, and engage in international collaborations that would empower African institutions to generate datasets, develop and apply data science models, and close the data science gap between Africa and high-income countries. In 2022, the NIH Common Fund awarded 20 grants worth $74.5 million in the “Harnessing Data Science for Health Discovery and Innovation in Africa (DS-I Africa)” program to accelerate data science health research in Africa.
Also, data science conferences and training programs are also proliferating in Africa including the Data Science Africa an AI and Data Science Research Group at Makerere University, Uganda, the multi-country African ML and AI organization Deep Learning Indaba, the School for Data Science and Computational Thinking at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences Centre of Excellence in Cameroon and the African Center of Excellence in Data Science in the University of Rwanda.
These programs are critical to generating data that will close the data science gap in Africa and enrich global resources for data science health research. With an intensified investment in Data science, better attention and development can be recorded with data and cloud technologies, which will prove pivotal to improve Cancer Research and Patient Care in Africa.
In conclusion, the integration of data and cloud technologies in cancer informatics holds immense promise for advancing cancer research and patient care in Africa. Despite the existing challenges and the historical development of applications outside the continent, the recent initiatives and collaborations demonstrate a growing commitment to harnessing the potential of these technologies.
The comprehensive approach of cancer informatics, spanning prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up, plays a pivotal role in addressing the complexities inherent in cancer management. The use of cloud computing in cancer research provides researchers with unprecedented access to extensive datasets, fostering in-depth analysis and accelerating progress towards precision medicine.
The urgency highlighted by the alarming cancer statistics in Africa emphasizes the need for strategic planning, policy formulation, and substantial investment in cancer care. The collaboration between various stakeholders, including researchers, institutions, governments, and the private sector, showcases a collective effort to leverage data science for positive health outcomes on the continent.
The initiatives for capacity building, infrastructure development, and international collaborations underscore the commitment to narrowing the data science gap between Africa and high-income countries. As evidenced by the NIH Common Fund’s significant grants and the proliferation of data science conferences and training programs across the continent, there is a concerted effort to empower African institutions in generating and applying data science models.
Moving forward, sustained investment in data science is crucial to addressing the unique challenges faced by Africa in healthcare. By prioritizing local contexts, adapting technologies to specific needs, and fostering continuous development, data and cloud technologies can play a transformative role in improving cancer research and patient care across the diverse landscape of Africa.
