Introduction
Hackathons are always an excellent opportunity to apply skills to real-world challenges. This year, UiPath announced its highly anticipated Hackathon event, and as RPA developers, we were excited to showcase our expertise. Although we didn’t make it to the final round, we achieved something even more significant: initiating a crucial conversation about how RPA, enhanced by AI, can potentially save human lives.
The inspiration for our project came from one of our team members, who had experience working with oncology cases during their time as a biotechnology student. They shared a compelling vision of how automation could support healthcare workers in ways that could positively impact patients’ lives. This insight led us to focus our efforts on leukemia cases.
About Proservartner
Proservartner is a global consulting and technology firm specializing in process automation, digital transformation, and operational excellence. With a commitment to innovation and impact, Proservartner helps organizations streamline their processes and adopt cutting-edge automation technologies to drive efficiency and growth. Their approach blends deep expertise with a people-centric ethos, empowering businesses to achieve lasting transformation.
Meet the Team
Shravari Patil: A Computer Science graduate from Mumbai, India, Shravari loves exploring new things, trekking, and dancing. She is an aspiring RPA enthusiast with a passion for learning and connecting with people.
Srinivas Kadamati: A 40-year-old Computer Science graduate from Andhra Pradesh, India, now living in Belfast, UK. Srinivas enjoys traveling, coding, and spending time with his twin kids.
Lukasz Pahlke: A 39-year-old Economics graduate from Gdynia, Poland, now residing in Edinburgh, Scotland. Lukasz enjoys traveling, coding, and plans to pursue a Private Pilot License (PPL).
Mikołaj Zieliński: A 33-year-old RPA Developer and Solution Architect from Poland, Mikołaj is a UiPath MVP 2024 with a passion for IoT, AI, and aviation. He is also a pet lover and board game enthusiast.
Dr. Tomasz Gromowski (SME): From Poland, Dr. Gromowski is a Ph.D. in medical science specializing in genetics and molecular biology. He has a deep interest in WWII history and fort exploration.
The Challenge of Finding a Donor:
Finding a suitable donor for bone marrow transplantation is one of the most significant challenges in leukemia treatment. The donor must meet stringent criteria to ensure compatibility and minimize complications. These include:
- HLA Antigen Matching: At least 8 out of 10 HLA markers must match between the donor and recipient to classify the donor as a good candidate. This ensures reduced risk of rejection and improves the transplant’s success rate.
- Allele-Level HLA Matching: Precise matching at the allele level for each antigen further reduces the risk of complications and improves outcomes.
- Age and Health of Donor and Recipient: Younger, healthier donors are preferred as they provide more viable stem cells, while age compatibility can affect the vitality of stem cells and recovery.
- Gender Match: Gender compatibility can influence the risk of post-transplant complications.
- Blood Type Compatibility: Ensures smoother transplantation processes and reduces potential complications.
- Viral and Latent Infection Compatibility: Particularly important for conditions like CMV status to prevent post-transplant infections.
- Non-HLA Gene Compatibility: Additional genes related to immune response must be considered to avoid rejection.
- Microbiome Compatibility: Emerging research suggests this could influence gut colonization and recovery post-transplant.
- Ethnicity and Lifestyle Factors: Ethnicity significantly affects the likelihood of finding a match due to genetic variation, while lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise, and overall health play a role in stem cell quality and donor suitability.
Each of these factors adds complexity to the donor-matching process, often making it a race against time. Patients may wait months or longer to find a suitable donor, during which their condition could worsen. This underscores the importance of developing solutions that can streamline and optimize this process.
The Global Donor Landscape:
Currently, there are 15 major donor banks globally, with approximately 37 million registered donors. While this may sound substantial, the challenge is staggering when we consider the sheer diversity of HLA genotypes. For instance, in Poland, the most common HLA combination occurs in only 1 in 20,000 individuals. Rarer combinations can be as unlikely as 1 in 90 million. The probability of finding a matching donor for a specific patient within a single country can be vanishingly small, as low as 0.00000000001 in some cases. Connecting global donor registries could drastically improve these odds by offering access to a much larger pool of potential matches. However, this task is complicated by differences in database formats, regulatory requirements such as GDPR, and logistical hurdles.
Example of Patient Matching:
To illustrate how the solution works, consider the case of a 33-year-old male leukemia patient from Poland with HLA genotyping results of A01:01, A02:01; B08:01, B15:01; C03:04, C07:01; DRB103:01, DRB113:01. The system matched him with Lisa Mueller, a 35-year-old female donor from Germany. Below is a summary of some matching details:
Patient Information:
- Age: 33
- Blood Type: A+
- Ethnicity: Polish
- HLA Typing: A01:01, A02:01; B08:01, B15:01; C03:04, C07:01; DRB103:01, DRB113:01…
Donor Information:
- Candidate ID: DE3501
- Age: 35
- Blood Type: B+
- Ethnicity: Caucasian (German)
- HLA Typing: A01:01, A02:01; B08:01, C07:01; DRB1:03:01…
Match Details:
- HLA Match: 9/10
- Success Rate Prediction: 78%
- Justification: XYZ has an excellent HLA compatibility score of 9/10, which minimizes the risk of rejection. Despite the blood type difference, her good health, non-smoking status, and Caucasian ethnicity enhance compatibility and increase the likelihood of a successful transplant.
This example highlights how the system effectively narrows down donor options, providing clear and actionable insights for medical personnel to make informed decisions quickly.
Travel Arrangements for Donors
Once a donor is approved by medical personnel and agrees to help, organizing logistics becomes crucial, especially for time-sensitive cases like leukemia. To address this, our project included an automated travel arrangement system leveraging Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The system:
- Automatically selects the best travel method (e.g., flight, train) based on the donor’s location and the patient’s hospital.
- Books accommodations through integration with Booking.com, ensuring the donor has a comfortable stay near the hospital.
- Generates detailed itineraries, sending all necessary travel and accommodation information directly to the donor via email.
While some transactional features, such as finalizing payments, were disabled for the hackathon, this functionality demonstrated the potential to minimize logistical delays and allow donors to focus on their life-saving contribution without added stress.
Benefits and the Case for a Unified Global System
The potential of a unified global donor system cannot be overstated. Despite the existence of millions of registered donors, the current system’s fragmentation limits its efficiency. For our project, we reached out to the five largest donor registries, yet none engaged with us. This reflects the barriers to collaboration that could otherwise be surmounted with better integration.
Key Benefits of a Unified Global System:
- Greater Match Opportunities: Combining registries worldwide would exponentially increase the likelihood of finding a compatible donor, especially for patients with rare HLA genotypes.
- Faster Matching: A centralized system powered by AI and automation could process donor-patient compatibility in seconds, rather than the days or weeks it often takes now.
- Improved Equity: A global system ensures that no patient is disadvantaged due to geographic or socioeconomic factors, giving everyone a fair chance to find a life-saving match.
- Streamlined Logistics: Beyond matching, a unified system could handle donor communication, travel arrangements, and medical coordination seamlessly.
A Call to Action
A globally unified system would not only save countless lives but also serve as a testament to what humanity can achieve through collaboration and innovation. The current lack of cooperation among the largest registries underscores the need for change. Let this discussion not end here; instead, let it be the spark that drives the conversation forward. Together, we can break down barriers, unify systems, and transform the future of medical care for patients in need.