Grant: Team Grant: Personalized Health

A cancer diagnosis is life-changing. When making decisions regarding treatment, patients deserve to have personalized answers to the questions to improve their understanding of their cancer and their likely outcomes. Currently, most prediction tools only take into account how long someone will live after being diagnosed with cancer. However, with current technology, we can create web-sites that can predict other outcomes that may be more important to patients, such as how they feel while they're undergoing treatment, or how many days they will have to visit the hospital for treatment. Having this information will improve patients' ability to talk with doctors, family members and their care team. Having personalized information regarding their cancer, will allow patients to be more informed and share the decision-making process with their health care team. With an ideal to provide accessible care to all patients, our team will create a novel digital health tool for patients with gastrointestinal cancers. First, we will work with patients and caregivers to determine what outcomes and issues matter most in making important decisions related to their cancer. Second, we will use data that is collected in Ontario for all cancer patients to build prediction algorithms. Third, we will test these algorithms using outcomes of patients who live in Manitoba. Fourth, we will use these algorithms to create a website that predicts outcomes for cancer patients. This tool will be available for free on a web-site, for use by all patients in Canada. Fifth, we will make sure the website is easy to access, understand and use. We have assembled a team of patients, doctors, scientists, statisticians, web-designers and health policy advocates to build this system. Patients will lead each step of analysis and creation of the web-site to make sure the patient's voice is heard. Team members represent Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta, and British Columbia.