|
Network
of Excellence
|
CARiMan
|
The
Internet Portal for Computer Aided Risk Management
|
Responsible:
USF
& NOM
Assistance:
BUTE, ICS,
IPM, PHENO,
PRO,
all
partners
Lung,
prostate, colon and breast cancers are the most prevalent oncological diseases
in our population, such that early diagnosis of these conditions
has been established as a priority in the European
Health Plan. Detection of specific symptoms at the primary care level triggers a set of exams to be immediately carried out at hospital level.
Appropriate scheduling of the necessary exams may greatly shorten potential
delays. Moreover, availability of relevant and complete data of the
patient that may be located in other health care settings may prevent duplicities and facilitate proper
diagnosis and prognosis of the disease condition. Finally, the access to
consultation of general references of similar cases may help to design the most
adequate treatment approach.
Microarrays
are an important research tool for the advancement of risk assessment in medical
sciences. However this technology has yet to be integrated with clinical
decision making. We propose to develop a framework for a test-bed integrated
database application to identify genomic markers for diagnosis and prognosis of
breast cancer. An extensible software architecture for retrieving data from
different microarray databases using MAGE-ML and for combining microarray data
with breast cancer clinical data for correlation studies will be developed. The
framework will provide the necessary data integration to move microarray
research from basic biological sciences to clinical applications.
The first objective of this JPA is to determine the specifications needed for the development of an
integrated breast cancer molecular diagnosis and prognosis.
The second
objective to create the
suitable knowledge representation of the given domain allowing the automated
reasoning over gathered data. This system will use
CARiManS structure.
The third
objective is to conduct innovative research for the situation - description relationship existing in the above
mentioned domain, i.e. the functional gene
expression platform.
The results from these two objectives
the
fourth
objective will be developed as
an operational system to represent protocols,
electronic patient records and other Corpus in the centralised Information and
Knowledge Repository. This system will be demonstrated
in a study area in Italy.
The last objective
of the JPA is to create
conditions allowing the automated reasoning over gathered data in order to
determine the usability of advanced data mining techniques and knowledge
management's ones. Therefore enabling risk management and
advanced decision-making to assist health workers in handling breast cancer
patients in the most efficient way.
The
above objectives will be achieved through
(1) identification of the end-user
needs;
(2) determination of information sources, existing procedures and
technology;
(3) writing-up of system’s specifications, estimation of the
initial investment and operational costs;
(4) development of possible
operational scenarios;
(5) an initial
design of breast cancer expression profile management system;
(6) determination
of the schedule for the implementation of the system.