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. 2024 Feb 7;21(2):189.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph21020189.

Consore: A Powerful Federated Data Mining Tool Driving a French Research Network to Accelerate Cancer Research

Julien Guérin  1 , Amine Nahid  2 , Louis Tassy  3 , Marc Deloger  4 , François Bocquet  5 , Simon Thézenas  6 , Emmanuel Desandes  7 , Marie-Cécile Le Deley  8 , Xavier Durando  9 , Anne Jaffré  10 , Ikram Es-Saad  11 , Hugo Crochet  12 , Marie Le Morvan  3 , François Lion  4 , Judith Raimbourg  5 , Oussama Khay  7 , Franck Craynest  8 , Alexia Giro  9 , Yec'han Laizet  10 , Aurélie Bertaut  11 , Frederik Joly  2 , Alain Livartowski  1 , Pierre Heudel  12
Affiliations

Consore: A Powerful Federated Data Mining Tool Driving a French Research Network to Accelerate Cancer Research

Julien Guérin et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

Background: Real-world data (RWD) related to the health status and care of cancer patients reflect the ongoing medical practice, and their analysis yields essential real-world evidence. Advanced information technologies are vital for their collection, qualification, and reuse in research projects.

Methods: UNICANCER, the French federation of comprehensive cancer centres, has innovated a unique research network: Consore. This potent federated tool enables the analysis of data from millions of cancer patients across eleven French hospitals.

Results: Currently operational within eleven French cancer centres, Consore employs natural language processing to structure the therapeutic management data of approximately 1.3 million cancer patients. These data originate from their electronic medical records, encompassing about 65 million medical records. Thanks to the structured data, which are harmonized within a common data model, and its federated search tool, Consore can create patient cohorts based on patient or tumor characteristics, and treatment modalities. This ability to derive larger cohorts is particularly attractive when studying rare cancers.

Conclusions: Consore serves as a tremendous data mining instrument that propels French cancer centres into the big data era. With its federated technical architecture and unique shared data model, Consore facilitates compliance with regulations and acceleration of cancer research projects.

Keywords: big data; cancer; cancer research; data mining; data warehouse; natural language processing.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Consore’s elementary data model.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Consore’s inferred model.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The Consore NLP architecture.
Figure 4
Figure 4
The Consore data processing pipeline (ETEP).
Figure 5
Figure 5
The Consore network in France (July 2023).
Figure 6
Figure 6
Impact of new Consore keywords in the identification of CUP patients at the “Institut Curie” (based on the initial query provided by the “Centre Léon Bérard”).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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