Highlights
- •Big data approach represents an alternative to EBM for thyroid cancer management.
- •The thyroid COBRA-Storage System (C-SS) is not time-consuming and privacy respecting.
- •The development of the C-SS through a multicentre consortium approach is feasible.
- •The thyroid C-SS can be applied in the near future to every cancer type.
Abstract
The big data approach offers a powerful alternative to Evidence-based medicine. This
approach could guide cancer management thanks to machine learning application to large-scale
data. Aim of the Thyroid CoBRA (Consortium for Brachytherapy Data Analysis) project
is to develop a standardized web data collection system, focused on thyroid cancer.
The Metabolic Radiotherapy Working Group of Italian Association of Radiation Oncology
(AIRO) endorsed the implementation of a consortium directed to thyroid cancer management
and data collection. The agreement conditions, the ontology of the collected data
and the related software services were defined by a multicentre ad hoc working-group
(WG).
Six Italian cancer centres were firstly started the project, defined and signed the
Thyroid COBRA consortium agreement. Three data set tiers were identified: Registry,
Procedures and Research. The COBRA-Storage System (C-SS) appeared to be not time-consuming
and to be privacy respecting, as data can be extracted directly from the single centre's
storage platforms through a secured connection that ensures reliable encryption of
sensible data. Automatic data archiving could be directly performed from Image Hospital
Storage System or the Radiotherapy Treatment Planning Systems.
The C-SS architecture will allow “Cloud storage way” or “distributed learning” approaches
for predictive model definition and further clinical decision support tools development.
The development of the Thyroid COBRA data Storage System C-SS through a multicentre
consortium approach appeared to be a feasible tool in the setup of complex and privacy
saving data sharing system oriented to the management of thyroid cancer and in the
near future every cancer type.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: February 21, 2018
Accepted:
February 12,
2018
Received in revised form:
December 31,
2017
Received:
September 25,
2017
Footnotes
☆The manuscript has been read and approved by all the authors.
☆The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Identification
Copyright
© 2018 European Federation of Internal Medicine. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
