Feasibility of Establishing an Artificial Intelligence Based Head and Neck Cancer Registry: Experience from a Tertiary Care Hospital

Introduction Establishing and maintaining a cancer registry in a tertiary high volume centre is fraught with difficulty, inaccuracy and missed data entry. Further, the raw unstructured data must be converted into a structured digital data, so that scientists can identify trends in cancer diagnoses and treatment responses. Objective We test the feasibility of establishing a cancer registry of Head and Neck malignancy patients through a research oriented artificial intelligence (AI) enabled data collection platform, using its smartphone application version. Materials and Methods This prospective observational study was conducted in the Department of Otolaryngology & Head and Neck Surgery, Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education And Research, Chandigarh in collaboration with Departments of Radiotherapy and Community Medicine. After taking due clearance from the Institute ethical committee, HNC patients, who were biopsy proven, were enrolled from October 2019 up to March 2021. The obtained data was entered, followed up and analysed through Jiyyo Research application which is a commercially available dedicated research oriented AI enabled data collection platform. Results The Jiyyo Research site was browsed and after proper registration, the patient data was entered into a proforma/questionnaire. The entered patient details were browsed for review, follow up and addition of new information. The whole process of data capture for each patient, took approximately 5-8 min, while any updates or review for the same patient required less than a minute. Search and data retrieval was very quick, and can be done in 1-2 min. Through this platform, a total of 1214 HNC patients were collected, followed and analysed during the study period. Conclusion It was feasible to establish a Head and Neck Cancer Registry using an AI based smartphone app. This AI based tumor registry could benefit in further studies with longer follow up of 5 and 10 years and in future AI studies.