IsraelHealthcare and life sciences2018Maccabi Healthcare Services
ColonFlag blood-test model to flag people at high risk of colorectal cancer
Maccabi used a blood-count model to flag 688 overdue screening candidates, and 19 cancers turned up among 254 who had a colonoscopy
Problem
Many adults in Israel's Maccabi health fund did not keep up with colorectal cancer screening. The fund wanted a cheap way to find those most likely to have cancer among about 80,000 overdue members.
Approach
The fund ran Medial EarlySign's ColonFlag model on its electronic medical records. The model scores risk from age, sex and complete blood count results alone. Physicians of the 688 members in the top 0.87 percent of risk were notified and asked to follow up. The results were published in JCO Clinical Cancer Informatics in 2018.
Results
Takeaway
A model that uses routine blood counts, age and sex picked out a small group with a high cancer yield among people who had skipped screening. The cancer detection rate covers only members who had a colonoscopy.
Categories
- Size
- Large enterprise
- Industry
- Healthcare and life sciences
- Business function
- Production and quality
- Innovation type
- Process innovation
- AI technology
- Predictive analytics and ML
- Adoption
- Vendor solution
- Goal
- Quality and risk
- Evidence
- Independent study
Sources
Source summaries
Goshen and colleagues scored 79,671 Maccabi members who were not up to date on colorectal screening and flagged 688. Of 254 who had a colonoscopy, 19 had cancer (7.5%), and code matching found 15 more cancers, mostly outside Maccabi.
Full details are in the original sources.
