The Health Promotion Administration (HPA) is next year to invest NT$10 million (US$338,707) on an artificial intelligence (AI) program that would automate data entry for cancer patients, which the agency said would vastly speed up the process and prevent erroneous entry.
The HPA plans to first introduce the new software to patients with one type of cancer on a trial basis, it said.
Taiwan has had a nationwide cancer registry system for more than 40 years, and in 2002 began feeding information about patients’ stage of cancer into the system, it said.
The information helps the agency analyze the effects of screening and the survival rate of patients, it added.
The results of the analysis is used in cancer prevention efforts and the compiling of national statistics, the agency said.
Through the efforts of government and medical staff over the past few decades, the nation’s collection and registration of cancer information have reached the standards in the US and Europe, it said.
The new AI system would further improve data accuracy through the use of natural language processing — a branch of AI concerned with interactions between computers and human language, HPA Cancer Prevention and Control Division Director Lin Li-ju (林莉茹) said on Sunday.
Under the current system, all data on cancer patients, including their treatment trajectory, pathological reports and the stage of cancer, need to be recorded and audited manually before being entered into the national registry, she said.
After entry, the information is compared with the patients’ death reports, as well as with their illness and test records, she said.
An annual report is prepared after all the data are checked for errors, she added.
Due to the large amount of work involved, the reports usually take at least two years to prepare, she said, adding that the latest report on cancer patients in Taiwan are from 2017.
National Taiwan University Hospital clinical professor of internal medicine Chiu Han-mo (邱瀚模) said that while the AI system is a welcome improvement and would make data recording more accurate, research would still rely on older data.
This is a phenomenon observed in other countries where AI is used in data-recording for cancer patients, he said.
“In terms of research, calculations usually take the better part of a day, but the data calculated are always several years old,” he said.
Data on cancer patients have been an important indicator in drafting policy on medical treatment, HPA Director-General Wang Ying-wei (王英偉) said.
Having faster access to reliable data through AI would greatly benefit policymaking, as well as cancer treatment research, he said.
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