Breast and prostate cancer treatment: improved decision making

PREDICT Prostate (credit: T. Almeroth-Williams)

Breast cancer is the most frequent cancer among women, affecting >2,000,000 women globally each year. Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men, with around 1,300,000 new cases globally each year.

Cambridge University researchers led the development of the ‘PREDICT’ platforms. These are free-of-charge online tools that facilitate informed treatment decision making for clinicians and their patients with breast or prostate cancer.

PREDICT Breast has had over 1,250,000 visits (as of June 2021) since 2014, including 330,000 in the UK and hundreds of thousands across North America, Europe, Australasia and South America. It is approved for clinical decision-making by the UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).

It is estimated that PREDICT Breast led to 7,500 National Health Service (NHS) patients being offered chemotherapy who would otherwise have not received it and, conversely, 11,000 women being appropriately spared unnecessary chemotherapy.

Modelled on PREDICT Breast, PREDICT Prostate launched in 2019 and has been accessed in over 110 countries and had over 30,000 hits (as of June 2021). Approximately 35% of men using this NICE-endorsed decision-making tool opt against unnecessary radical treatment, producing potential savings to the NHS of £46 million.

“Men ask me all the time, what is my risk for ED/incontinence/bowel dysfunction. My answer now will be that, “That’s impossible to project accurately on an individualized basis, but the PREDICT Prostate system can give you a decent estimate of that risk at 3 years post-diagnosis”. I live in the very real world of “What do you think I should I do?” You’ve just made answering that question a lot easier for tens of thousands of men every year!”

– Prostate Cancer International website, April 2019