Are you afraid Artificial Intelligence (AI) will replace your job? It’s too soon to evaluate AI’s impact on the workforce. Nevertheless, the idea that machines will make some human endeavors obsolete is difficult to avoid.
Professor Daniela Haluza of the Medical University of Vienna, Austria is conducting groundbreaking research on AI’s impact on public health.
In a recent conversation with Breaking Cancer News, she talked about AI’s capabilities and weaknesses.
“AI’s rising role in medical research presents a transformative shift, driven by its data processing capabilities. This development will open possibilities never seen before,” says Haluza.
Ignoring AI’s potential to transform society is a mistake, but dismissing the unique attributes of people is too.
Here we will discuss how clinicians working together, and embracing what makes us who we are, is making strides in one of society’s most pressing issues: helping children combat brain tumors.
Central Nervous System Cancers in Children
Over 200k children and young adults in the United States have a brain or central nervous system (CNS) tumor diagnosis.
Compared to other cancers that impact children, brain and CNS malignancies (representing about 20% of childhood cancers), tend to have poorer prognoses, and are the types of cancers that cause more deaths in children. Their clinical management is not an easy task.
There are limited patient tissue samples for the study of cancer biological characteristics that cause harm to children’s brains. Better models for testing treatments before clinical trials are still in progress, and research data is scattered and poorly connected.
A better understanding of pediatric brain tumors’ molecular properties will help clinicians categorize them—opening the door to more precise-targeted therapies and more saved lives.
Beyond research challenges, clinicians treating brain tumors face another obstacle, unpredictability.
The Variable Nature of Cancer
A radical transformation in cancer understanding is the realization that it’s not a predictable disease.
Genetic and environmental factors create molecular changes that influence cancer’s onset, progression, and prognosis. These shifts make it a dynamic process characterized by unique circumstances from child to child—even if they have the same type of tumor.
Tumor variability means that response to treatment for brain cancer is not easy to predict or even evaluate.
For oncologists, the exponential growth of disciplines like biotechnology, genetics, and biology makes it impossible to develop expertise in every technological domain involved in treating pediatric brain tumors.
Help was needed.
Team Play: Necessary in Modern Oncology Care
Multidisciplinary tumor boards, developed in the UK in the early 1990s, were the answer to tackling cancer’s complexity and the specialized talent required for it.
The idea is simple, yet brilliant. Experts in their field meet to evaluate all therapeutic possibilities for cancer-impacted children.
What does a multidisciplinary tumor board (MTB) for pediatric CNS cancers look like in clinical practice?
Boards tend to meet twice a month. They’re typically comprised of pediatric oncologists, neuroradiologists, neurosurgeons, radiation oncologists specialized in pediatric brain tumors, and neuropathologists.
Tumor board meetings are action-oriented. In general, clinicians decide the optimal therapeutic route for a child, check tumor response, and change courses if necessary.
But how effective are tumor boards at improving outcomes for children battling brain tumors?
Effectiveness of Tumor Boards
Multidisciplinary oncology care improves the likelihood of more personalized treatments, as well as helping oncology practices better allocate their resources.
Individuals in multidisciplinary settings are more likely to receive comprehensive evaluations before surgery and benefit from multimodal treatment options.
Research has shown that when experts discuss a patient’s optimal treatment path, adherence to the latest neuro-oncology guidelines improves, leading to incorporating the newest protocols into patient care.
A recent study investigated the effectiveness of tumor boards in children battling CNS tumors.
Practices that implement tumor boards report more satisfaction among children and their parents. They also experienced reduced treatment abandonment, and fewer missed appointments, contributing to better therapeutic outcomes.
The Power of Collective Problem Solving
The power of tumor boards in clinical practice is astounding.
In 115 cases analyzed by a tumor board evaluating children with brain tumors, 72 of them had a modification to their therapeutic management due to pediatric neuroradiologists’ criteria, based on poor tumor response to treatment despite a correct initial diagnosis.
When experts on brain cancer gather to analyze challenging cases, they engage in an activity that humans excel at over technologies like AI: collective problem-solving.
Brain tumors are one of the most challenging problems humans can tackle. Deciding how to face them, medically, requires a case-by-case decision-making process.
Professor Haluza explains: “While AI can provide insights into distinct areas of research, it lacks human intuition, context, and understanding, not covered by 0 and 1, but true human intelligence.”
Neuro-oncology tumor boards assess imaging results continuously. This activity, due to tumor variability, benefits from a proper level of suspicion about the best way to treat it.
Suspicion is not AI’s strong suit. Tools like Large Language Models give direct answers based on statistical probabilities, not healthy debate.
Clinicians on tumor boards create a safe space for medical dialogue.
MR findings can be interpreted using different lenses. Disagreements can be voiced. Unnecessary procedures can be avoided. Revisions to treatment protocols can be started.
However, despite its limitations, technology has a vital role to play.
Multiplying Human Expertise
Collaboration across medical specialties amplifies the reach of oncology interventions.
Tumor boards help close gaps in oncology care, as many initial exams of children battling brain tumors may be performed in places where pediatric neuro-oncology is not abundant, so re-interpretation of initial findings, as it happens in these meetings, may reroute therapeutic interventions to their appropriate path.
In small communities where certain specialists are not abundant, access to virtual tumor boards offers children better chances of fighting brain tumors.
As AI tools get more precise in analyzing large datasets and remote collaboration tools advance, a future in which local small oncology practices can feed a system with a child’s history and get support from the world’s state-of-the-art cancer research centers in a fluid way does not seem implausible.
Yet, humans will continue to be the protagonists of oncology care delivery, as Prof. Haluza clarifies.
”Clinical guidelines lose their shine if they lack human scrutiny that ensures accuracy and reliability.”
Augmenting, Not Replacing, Humans
Experts working together, with the aid of technologies like AI, will push oncology care for children battling brain tumors forward.
Haluza concludes, “Clinical progress is built on trust. Without human expertise evaluating AI’s contributions properly, trust cracks, weakening the foundation of evidence-based science.”
