Safeguarding the Future
Paediatric cancer
Using real-world clinical data to better predict cardiovascular and infection risks in children undergoing cancer treatment.
Precision Monitoring
The Challenge: Preventing Complications through Data
Paediatric cancer survival has improved significantly across Europe, leading to a growing number of children and adolescents who need safer treatments and long-term follow-up. Despite these advances, many pediatric cancer patients experience serious complications during and after therapy. Among themost significant are cardiovascular dysfunction and severe infections, both of which remain major causes of morbidity and health care burden.
Cardiovascular complications may develop silently as a late effect of cancer treatments, often becoming apparent years after therapy, when prevention options are limited. Acute cardiovascular dysfunction can also occur during treatment or shortly thereafter, requiring close monitoring.In parallel, infections remain one of the most frequent and potentially life-threatening complications during active cancer treatment, particularly when the immune system is compromised. While a fever can be the first noticeable sign, it often appears late, and delays in noticing and treating it can lead to more serious health problems.
Cardiovascular dysfunction
Cardiovascular complications often develop silently as late effects, appearing years after therapy.
Severe Infections
Infections remain a frequent, life-threatening risk during active treatment when the immune system is compromised.
A key challenge in this context is that relevant clinical information is fragmented across multiple sources, including medical records, diagnostic tests, and follow-up visits, and makes it difficult to analyse in an integrated manner. Moreover, early warning signs of cardiovascular stress or infection are often subtle and precede overt clinical symptoms.
Improved availability, integration, and reuse of high-quality clinical data are therefore particularly important in paediatric oncology. Continuous monitoring, including data from wearable devices, can capture early physiological changes that may signal emerging risks. By enabling earlier detection and more personalised care, better data integration supports a more preventive, data-driven approach to paediatric cancer care and long-term survivorship across Europe.
Transforming Patient Data
The Use Case Objectives
This Use Case contributes to the UNCAN-Connect project by providing high-quality, real-world clinical data focused on the prevention and early detection of major complications in paediatric cancer care. It addresses two closely related and clinically relevant challenges faced by children undergoing cancer treatment: cardiovascular dysfunction and severe infections.
The main objective is to enable improved use and reuse of clinical data to identify early warning signals that are often missed in routine care. By integrating heterogeneous data sources, the Use Case supports a more preventive and risk-oriented approach topaediatric cancer management and contributes directlyto the objectives of UNCAN-Connect.
Use Case 1.1 focuses on cardiovascular risk in paediatric cancer patients. It contributes longitudinal clinical data routinely collected during cancer treatment and follow-up, including information on cancer diagnosis, treatment exposures, cardiovascular assessments, imaging and diagnostic test results, and long-term outcomes. These data allow the evolution of cardiovascular risk over time to be analysed in children exposed to cancer therapies.
In parallel, Use Case 1.2 provides data on infection risk during active treatment. It provides data on clinical observations, laboratory results, hospital admissions, and documented infection events. A key added value of this Use Case is the inclusion of continuous vital-sign data collected through wearable devices. These data enable the monitoring of physiological parameters over time and support the identification of subtle changes that may precede fever or clinically apparent infection.
Together, these datasets support the development of predictive models for cardiovascular risk in children undergoing cancer therapy (UC1.1 | CVRISK-4CANCERKIDS) and predictive algorithms for earlier identification of infection risk (UC1.2 | SWISS 2024 CVSM).
The combination of traditional clinical data with continuous monitoring data is particularly valuable, as it enables the detection of patterns that are not visible through episodic measurements alone. Within UNCAN-Connect, this Use Case serves both as a practical application and as a key data provider, demonstrating how sensitive paediatric data can be securely shared, harmonised, and reused across institutions and countries to support prevention-focused cancer research and care.
- Integrate real-world clinical data and wearable monitoring data for pediatric cancer patients.
- Evaluate patterns and early warning signals of cardiovascular complications and infections.
- Develop a proof-of-concept for a data-driven approach to monitor and predict these complications across different European centers.
- Demonstrate how federated data reuse can lead to better preventive strategies in pediatric oncology.
A Roadmap for Better Outcomes
Expected Impact
The pediatric cancer Use Case supports UNCAN-Connect by demonstrating how diverse, high-quality clinical data from children with cancer can contribute to a more interoperable and reusable European cancer data ecosystem.
For researchers
For researchers, access to harmonized pediatric datasets enables more robust studies of early warning signals, risk patterns, and acute and long-term effects of cancer treatment. The inclusion of continuous monitoring data creates new opportunities to examine changes that precede clinical symptoms, supporting more innovative and preventive research.
For healthcare professionals
For healthcare professionals, insights from this data can support earlier identification of children at higher risk of cardiovascular complications or severe infections. These insights can inform more personalized follow-up strategies, closer monitoring during vulnerable periods, and timelier interventions, improving patient safety and care quality.
For healthcare systems
Healthcare systems may benefit from reduced emergency events, fewer severe complications, and more efficient use of hospital resources. Earlier detection and prevention can help avoid intensive treatments and unplanned hospitalizations, contributing to more sustainable care pathways.
For patients & families
For patients and families, the Use Case has the potential to improve quality of life by reducing the burden of late effects and acute complications. Earlier action, informed by better data, can mean fewer disruptions to daily life and greater confidence in long-term survivorship care.
A LEGACY OF PREVENTIVE CARE
By contributing high-quality pediatric data, including wearable-derived data, to a federated European platform, this Use Case strengthens the long-term sustainability of UNCAN-Connect and supports a more inclusive, preventive, and data-driven future for cancer research and care in Europe.