A prognosis system for colorectal cancer

Abstract

The level of uncertainty and incompleteness in the information upon which healthcare professionals have to make judgments has been a subject of discussion in the past, and more nowadays, with the advent of the so-called Clinical Decision Support Systems. This work addresses uncertainty in the postoperative prognosis for colorectal cancer. The interdependence and synergistic effect of different clinical features comes into play when it is necessary to predict how a patient will react to this type of surgery. Using a probabilistic based knowledge representation, a decision support system was conceived in order to provide support for physicians under these circumstances, in particular to surgeons. The solution proposed is based on machine learning on records of cancer patients, incorporating explicit knowledge of experts about the domain. To facilitate access and thus increase its dissemination in the healthcare community, the system is integrated in a wider platform available through a web application.