KIMONA – Artificial Intelligence for Improved Cancer Registration

Reliable cancer registration is a vital foundation for medical research and the advancement of cancer care. In North Rhine-Westphalia, diagnoses, treatments, and disease progression are reported to the State Cancer Registry. However, much of the information required for this has, until now, had to be manually compiled from various clinical systems and medical documents. This is precisely where the ERDF-funded KIMONA project comes in. “KIMONA” stands for AI-based reporting optimization for cancer registries in North Rhine-Westphalia. The collaborative project is developing digital solutions using modern AI methods to automatically analyze medical data and prepare it for cancer registration. 

Making Medical Documentation More Efficient

A large portion of the information required for cancer registration is contained in unstructured physician’s notes, test results, or other free-text documents. KIMONA uses modern language models and other AI methods to automatically recognize, extract, and provide this information in a structured format. This allows data on diagnoses, treatments, or disease progression to be processed more quickly. After a professional review, the processed data will be transferred to the cancer registry. This simplifies documentation processes and reduces the workload on medical staff.

Strong Partnership for Innovation in North Rhine-Westphalia

The project is coordinated by the University Hospital of Cologne and the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Cologne. Also involved are the major university cancer centers in North Rhine-Westphalia, the NRW State Cancer Registry, and the Essen-based company TamedAI. Together, the partners are developing interoperable solutions that can be used across multiple locations. In the long term, the technologies developed in the project are intended not only to benefit cancer registration but also to be usable for other clinical registries and research databases. In this way, KIMONA strengthens digitalization in the healthcare sector and North Rhine-Westphalia as a research hub.