Irish push to better explain cancer risks

CANCER CARE:IRISH-BASED researchers have teamed up with a major cancer research institute in France to develop ways of communicating cancer risks to patients.

Though doctors have long known there are environmental factors, such as smoking, and genetic factors, especially for illnesses such as breast cancer, they struggle to communicate those risks to patients.

IBM Research, based in Dublin, has signed an agreement with the Paoli-Calmettes Institute’s regional cancer centre in Marseille to develop ways of communicating risk to patients at both pre and post-screening states. The initial focus will be on prostate cancer.

Lea Deleris of IBM Research said the purpose was to devise ways to explain to patients in the clearest possible manner “the risks associated with their situation and help them understand their doctor’s recommendation or make their own decisions if they want to do screening or go for treatment”.

IBM Research is involved in a number of projects designed to communicate data better. At a media briefing yesterday as part of the forum, it outlined the research it was doing using Dublin as a way of “building a smarter city”.

The Dublin area open data plan, Dublinked, is one of the first attempts to use public data for the benefit of businesses and citizens in cities.

Director of IBM Research Ireland Lisa Amini said data collection was important if cities are to learn from mistakes that are made when crises occur.

She said the leading cities nowadays were often the ones that had the money to build essential infrastructure, but the smarter cities in the future were the ones which would be able to build such infrastructure in the most cost-efficient way.

IBM Research is also working on sensor devices to measure the underwater noise generated by wave energy devices. Such devices can be harmful and disruptive to mammals such as dolphins and seals. There are 24 species of mammal off the Irish coast.

Engineer Harry Kolar said they had just put a monitoring buoy 1km off the coast of Spiddal that would transmit underwater data for a year to understand how the noise varies. He said the research would mark Ireland out as a world leader in such technology.