My Best Treatment

The goal of this project is to predict treatment outcomes for a patient and explicitly involve them in the decision-making process. The project focuses on two major developments that make care better, more personalized, and more efficient: Personalized Medicine and Patient Empowerment.

Personalized Medicine integrates personal characteristics and medical information of a patient into the diagnosis and treatment. By linking unique patient information with scientific insights and global experience data, doctors can better predict whether a treatment will be effective or not. We have developed models that, based on all this medical data, can predict the treatment results of patients. These outcomes are then integrated into Decision Support Systems (DSS), after which the final treatment method is determined in collaboration with the patient. 

Shared decision-making with the patient, 'Patient Empowerment', means that the patient plays a central role in the decision-making and treatment process. By providing the right information and outlining options, the patient can make their own decision. Research by the patient federation NPCF shows that this is what 98% of patients wish for. A module that focuses on shared decision-making was designed, with attention to the medical aspects of lung cancer as well as the psychological and social consequences. The patient is screened and referred accordingly. 

This project was awarded funding by CZ in 2016.