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A comprehensive cancer center in the cloud powered by AI can reduce health disparities

Nature Medicine volume 30, pages 2388–2389 (2024)Cite this article

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Recent reports by the American Association for Cancer Research1,2 have highlighted cancer-associated health inequalities for those who are Black, Indigenous, or people of color. Black Americans have the highest overall death rates from cancer of any racial or ethnic group in the USA: for example, death rates from prostate cancer for Black men are more than double those for every other racial or ethnic group, and Black women over the age of 50 are twice as likely to die of breast cancer as white women. Geography, race, earnings, attitude and technology (sometimes abbreviated ‘GREAT’) are structural barriers to health equity2. Integrated, multilevel and customized interventions are urgently needed to address these health barriers.

The Comprehensive Cancer Center in the Cloud (C4) is a multi-institutional and interdisciplinary collaboration whose inception was catalyzed by presentations and discussions at the Global Health Catalyst (GHC) summit. The C4 is a multilevel community-oriented, patient-empowering, cloud-based health platform that brings together medical institutions, religious and spiritual leaders, Black and Indigenous communities and people of color, and educators to collaborate toward achieving health equity. With the support of technology such as artificial intelligence (AI), this initiative seeks to improve access and the quality of care for underserved communities, to overcome disparities based on residential zip codes, to include cultural and spiritual needs in research models, and to bring healthcare to communities (rather than waiting for people to come to medical centers, often with advanced disease stages).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Rutgers Global Health Institute, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

    Wilfred Ngwa, Richard Marlink & Labenyimoh Patrick

  2. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Wilfred Ngwa & Fallon Chipidza

  3. Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Wilfred Ngwa, Curtiland Deville & Harry Quon

  4. Drew Theological Seminary, Drew University, Madison, NJ, USA

    Arthur Pressley, Vanessa M. Wilson, Labenyimoh Patrick & Kenneth Ngwa

  5. Church of the Good Shepherd, Willingboro, NJ, USA

    Vanessa M. Wilson

  6. Division of Clinical Informatics, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA

    Yuri Quintana

  7. Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Stephen Avery

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  1. Wilfred Ngwa
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  2. Arthur Pressley
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Correspondence to Kenneth Ngwa.

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Ngwa, W., Pressley, A., Wilson, V.M. et al. A comprehensive cancer center in the cloud powered by AI can reduce health disparities. Nat Med 30, 2388–2389 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-024-03119-y

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