Fujitsu today announced that it has conducted a joint research project with Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited and the National Cancer Center Japan to analyze patient journeys, the process that leads from the recognition, diagnosis, treatment, and subsequent life of ovarian cancer patients based on electronic medical record data. The collaboration successfully visualized a wide range of treatment patterns.
The three organizations presented the results of the joint research at International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) 2023 held on May 9, 2023 in Boston, Massachusetts.
The three organizations analyzed data related to patient journeys from examination to initiation of treatment to post-treatment chronologically on a patient-by-patient basis for patients with ovarian cancer who were registered on the electronic medical record system at the National Cancer Center Hospital East in Japan and visualized a wide range of treatment patterns. These treatment patterns are expected to assist physicians and patients in jointly selecting optimal treatment.
This study was conducted based on a joint research agreement that Fujitsu concluded with Takeda and the National Cancer Center Japan in May 2021 with the aim of identifying clinical challenges that will contribute to improving the quality and therapeutic efficacy of personalized ovarian cancer treatment. In this study, Fujitsu extracted and standardized medical data including time series information such as anonymized treatment histories of 574 ovarian cancer patients between May 2013 and October 2020 recorded on the electronic medical record system of the National Cancer Center Hospital East and added medical knowledge of the physician’s choice of treatment to create a dataset. Takeda used it to select data to analyze patient journeys.
Fujitsu’s approach
The secure analysis environment, our technology utilized by the three organizations above, was provided as a precursor to the technology provided by Fujitsu’s cloud-based Platform for healthcare, for the utilization of real-world data(1) such as medical and health data in the medical field, which we began offering in March 2023. In the future, the platform will be able to extract patient medical data and convert it into HL7 FHIR(2).
Using the results of validation of the effectiveness of the analysis environment, Fujitsu plans to provide a secure analytics environment with enhanced support on factor analysis using AI and visualization technologies through its cloud-based platform for the healthcare sector in the first half of fiscal 2023. In this way, Fujitsu will work with various companies involved in promoting wellbeing, including pharmaceutical manufacturers, medical device manufacturers and insurance companies to realize a digital health ecosystem that creates new value for society by utilizing real-world data.
Comment from Dr. Katsuya Tsuchihara, Chief, Division of Translational Informatics, Exploratory Oncology Research and Clinical Trial Center, National Cancer Center Japan:
“The study revealed that real-world data from daily medical care can be used to visualize patient journeys. We hope these results will help improve the treatment outcomes of cancer patients and provide them with useful information for treatment at other institutions. We hope to see further progress in this area by understanding the needs of our research partners and medical institutions for overcoming cancer. We also believe that standardization of electronic medical record data and more mature technologies such as blockchain that can be analyzed securely are needed.”
