Telemedicine for cancer pain management: CTGAN application and ML classification

Background: The utilization of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare has significant potential to revolutionize the delivery of medical services, particularly in the field of telemedicine. In this article, we investigate the capabilities of a specific deep learning model, a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), and explore its potential for enhancing the telemedicine approach to cancer pain management.

Materials and Methods: We implemented a structured dataset comprising demographic and clinical variables from 226 patients and 489 telemedicine visits for cancer pain management. The deep learning model, specifically a conditional GAN, was employed to generate synthetic samples from our dataset that closely resemble real individuals in terms of their characteristics. Subsequently, four machine learning algorithms were implemented to assess the variables associated with a higher number of remote visits.

Results: The generated dataset exhibits a distribution comparable to the reference dataset for all considered variables, including age, number of visits, tumor type, performance status, characteristics of metastasis, opioid dosage, and type of pain. Among the algorithms tested, Random Forest demonstrated the highest performance in predicting a higher number of remote visits, achieving an accuracy of 0.8 on the test data.

Conclusion: As the advancement of healthcare processes relies on scientific evidence, AI techniques such as GANs can play a vital role in bridging knowledge gaps and accelerating the integration of telemedicine into clinical practice. Nonetheless, it is crucial to carefully address the limitations associated with these approaches.