HPVGuard: A software platform to support management and prognosis of cervical cancer

Cervical cancer (CxCa) is one of the commonest reasons of women's mortality, although it can be prevented and treated if diagnosed early. Key to this is the regular examination with the test Papanikolaou but nowadays also with ancillary molecular biology tests. In this paper the authors present aspects of the architecture, design and implementation of the HPVGuard information system, a software platform capable to store and handle a multitude of medical examination data along with non-medical information. HPVGuard integrates artificial intelligence models that combine data from different medical examinations and produce an estimation of women's risk to develop CxCa. The application of HPVGuard proved that computerized systems supporting women control can be of extreme value. This is nowadays feasible via the use of inexpensive tools and can be made available to the end users as a web service on standard computers as well as on a variety of mobile terminals.