The Sener Foundation and the Ramón y Cajal Hospital win the Ennova Health Award in the Big Data and Artificial Intelligence category for their AI application project for the prevention of familial cancer

The Sener Foundation and the Ramón y Cajal University Hospital in Madrid have won the Ennova Health Award 2024, in the Big Data and Artificial Intelligence category, for the project called CARE-AI for the development of an artificial intelligence-based tool to identify the risk of hereditary familial cancer.

The awards ceremony took place within the framework of Ennova Health Day, a meeting organized by Diario Médico and Correo Farmacéutico that brought together professionals from the health sector and was held at the Real Teatro de Retiro in Madrid.

The president of Sener and president of the Sener Foundation, Andrés Sendagorta, was responsible of collecting the award. The event was also attended by María García and Marta Fernández, Sener professionals who have developed this tool – together with Julia Simón – through a volunteer programme of the Sener Foundation, and the director of the Sener Foundation, Rosana Madroñal. On behalf of the Ramón y Cajal University Hospital, Carmen Guillén, head of the Medical Oncology Section and head of the Familial Cancer Unit, and Javier Zamora, head of the Clinical Biostatistics Unit, attended.

The award-winning project consists of the development of a tool that, using artificial intelligence (AI), helps to more efficiently identify those people with a higher probability of presenting a hereditary genetic susceptibility to cancer. For its development, anonymised information contained in approximately 10,000 family genealogical trees (covering three or more generations) and clinical data of individuals, anonymised information provided by the Hospital, were used. This information includes data such as age of diagnosis, presence and type of tumours or relevant benign pathologies, among others. The aim is to provide clinicians with a tool that helps in their decision-making process by estimating an individual’s risk of presenting a hereditary genetic susceptibility to cancer and, also, when selecting candidates to carry out a germline genetic study. More information about the project.

The Ennova Health Awards, which will celebrate their 4th edition in 2024, aim to identify and recognise digital health initiatives that add value, contribute to the sustainability of the system and improve the patient’s quality of life. The awards ceremony was attended, among other personalities, by the Deputy Minister of Digitalisation of the Ministry of Digitalisation of the Community of Madrid, Manuel Pérez Gómez, and the Secretary General of Digital Health and Information Systems for the National Health System (SNS) of the Ministry of Health, Juan Fernando Muñoz Montalvo.