Studying lung cancer in people who have never smoked
OLIVE is a UK study plan to learn what predicts, and what follows, lung cancer in people who have never smoked, using routine health records and language technology.
The question
Lung cancer is usually linked with smoking. Yet among people who have never smoked it is still the seventh most common cause of cancer death worldwide. We understand far less about it, especially in the UK, which makes it harder to diagnose early.
What we plan to do
This paper describes the plan for the study, called OLIVE. It will build a UK multi-hospital group of adults with lung cancer who never smoked, looking backwards and forwards in time, using routinely collected GP and hospital records. Deep learning language technology will read the free-text parts of those records. The first stage is a pilot of 225 patients at one hospital before expanding to more sites, and patient representatives helped shape the plan.
What we will look at
The main questions are about who gets this cancer, which other conditions and environmental exposures are involved, how people first come to medical attention, and which symptoms they have.
Why it matters
This is a protocol, so there are no results yet. Better knowledge of how this cancer shows up should help doctors recognise it sooner.