Using national health data to predict cancer risk

Using national health data to predict cancer risk unknown

A typical pattern is that, sadly, diseases, including cancer, often come in clusters. This [...] is a correlation that could be taken into account when calculating cancer riskMoritz Gerstung

This large, systematic study used comprehensive data from the Danish health register, in which all clinical diagnoses of the population are stored. The researchers systematically analysed health records, family history, and lifestyle data. While the analysis does not allow an exact prediction of which person will develop cancer, it does determine the individual risk, and enable a comparison with people of a similar age. 

The prediction model was first trained on data collected between 1995 and 2014 from 6.7 million adults. The training dataset included more than 90 million diagnoses spanning over 1,000 different diseases. The model was then validated on datasets from the same registry, collected between 2015 and 2018, and covering 4.7 million Danes. The agreement between the model’s predictions and the time when individuals developed cancer, if any, was 81%. The model had high accuracy for cancers of the digestive system, as well as for thyroid, kidney, and uterine cancer.