OperA · OPTIMISING COLORECTAL CANCER PREVENTION TROUGH PERSONALISED TREATMENT WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Integration of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies into clinical medicine has been hampered by challenges related to uncertain long-term clinical benefits, cost-effectiveness, and ethics/legal concerns. Application of AI in colonoscopy, a forefront research topic, has been also bothered by these issues. AI is, however, expected to reduce colorectal cancer incidence and mortality through personalised treatment. Our proposed project would change this discouraging situation and thus drastically improves colorectal cancer care. We achieve the following goals: 1. Establish the value of AI-assisted colonoscopy in colorectal cancer prevention by conducting a pan-European, population-based, randomised trial with 222,000 participants. 2. Develop a colonoscopy AI risk-prediction tool for personalized treatment of colorectal polyps and cancer. 3. Develop cost-effectiveness models of AI-assisted colonoscopy in colorectal cancer screening. 4. Investigate ethical and legal barriers in AI development and implementation. 5. Generate the first trustworthy and rapidly updating (?living?) clinical guidelines for AI in screening colonoscopy. 6. Develop a patient-oriented AI tool by including end-users in the process of AI development and communication. Our research consortium maximises the feasibility of the project, with world-class experts in gastroenterology, machine learning, cancer screening, biostatistics, disease modelling, regulatory science, and ethics and law in medicine from nine European countries, the US and Japan. We also partner with a European medium-size AI enterprise for implementing the output of the project. The project has large potential impact on patients, society, and economy in Europe, and the World. Up to 6,000 fewer deaths due to colorectal cancer and saving of 720 million euro can be expected per year once the technology is widely accepted in Europe.