Dr. Hongfang Liu will employ the proposed CPRIT funding to realize the WONDER (Real World Data-driven Precision Oncology through Data Science and Informatics Excellence in Research) project at UTHealth Houston School of Biomedical Informatics. Rapid advances in cancer care are a crucial public health priority and, most especially, with regard to evaluating disparities associated with novel cancer therapies. To that end, significant progress in this area of research can be made through leveraging various types of real-world data (RWD) sources to derive data-driven insights associated with the translation and implementation of novel cancer therapies in the clinical environment. The WONDER proj...

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Dr. Hongfang Liu will employ the proposed CPRIT funding to realize the WONDER (Real World Data-driven Precision Oncology through Data Science and Informatics Excellence in Research) project at UTHealth Houston School of Biomedical Informatics. Rapid advances in cancer care are a crucial public health priority and, most especially, with regard to evaluating disparities associated with novel cancer therapies. To that end, significant progress in this area of research can be made through leveraging various types of real-world data (RWD) sources to derive data-driven insights associated with the translation and implementation of novel cancer therapies in the clinical environment. The WONDER project aims to accelerate real-world, data-driven precision oncology through the use of longitudinal patient records (LPRs) to accomplish the following three aims: • Aim 1: Develop informatics solutions for accelerating cancer information extraction from LPRs to address challenges associated with the prevalence of detailed information required for cancer research that resides in clinical narratives;• Aim 2: Advance inclusive cohort identification for LPR-based observational studies to address challenges associated with biased, incomplete, or non-interoperable LPR data due to disparities in cancer care; • Aim 3: Implement a scalable cyberinfrastructure for LPR-empowered oncology research to facilitate team science collaboration in precision oncology. The WONDER project builds upon the PI’s extensive data science and informatics research associated with LPRs, ranging from core informatics research in clinical natural language processing (NLP), to real-world translation focused on clinical decision support empowered by AI. The impact of the proposed project lies in the development of methodological innovations to minimize disparities in cancer outcomes that would not be feasible through conventional approaches.

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