A Quantum-Enhanced Precision Medicine Application to Support Data-Driven Clinical Decisions for the Personalized Treatment of Advanced Knee Osteoarthritis: The Development and Preliminary Validation of precisionKNEE_QNN

Nima Heidari; Stefano Olgiati; Davide Meloni; Mark Slevin; Ali Noorani; Federico Pirovano; Leonard Azamfirei

doi:10.7759/cureus.52093

A Quantum-Enhanced Precision Medicine Application to Support Data-Driven Clinical Decisions for the Personalized Treatment of Advanced Knee Osteoarthritis: The Development and Preliminary Validation of precisionKNEE_QNN

Cureus. 2024 Jan 11;16(1):e52093. doi: 10.7759/cureus.52093. eCollection 2024 Jan.

Authors

Nima Heidari^{1

2

3}, Stefano Olgiati^{4

5}, Davide Meloni⁶, Mark Slevin³, Ali Noorani⁷, Federico Pirovano⁸, Leonard Azamfirei³

Affiliations

¹ Medical Supercomputation and Machine Learning, European Quantum Medical, London, GBR.
² Foot, Ankle and Limb Reconstruction, Orthopaedic Specialists, London, GBR.
³ Medicine, Pharmacy, Science and Technology, George Emil Palade University, Targu Mures, ROU.
⁴ Medical Supercomputation and Biostatistics, European Quantum Medical, Milan, ITA.
⁵ Department of Biomedical Technologies and Translational Medicine, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, ITA.
⁶ Supercomputation and Artificial Intelligence, European Quantum Medical, Turin, ITA.
⁷ Upper Limb, Orthopaedic Specialists, London, GBR.
⁸ Quantum Machine Learning, European Quantum Medical, Milan, ITA.

Abstract

Background Quantum computing and quantum machine learning (QML) are promising experimental technologies that can improve precision medicine applications by reducing the computational complexity of algorithms driven by big, unstructured, real-world data. The clinical problem of knee osteoarthritis is that, although some novel therapies are safe and effective, the response is variable, and defining the characteristics of an individual who will respond remains a challenge. In this study, we tested a quantum neural network (QNN) application to support precision data-driven clinical decisions to select personalized treatments for advanced knee osteoarthritis. Methodology After obtaining patients' consent and Research Ethics Committee approval, we collected the clinicodemographic data before and after the treatment from 170 patients eligible for knee arthroplasty (Kellgren-Lawrence grade ≥3, Oxford Knee Score (OKS) ≤27, age ≥64 years, and idiopathic aetiology of arthritis) treated over a two-year period with a single injection of microfragmented fat. Gender classes were balanced (76 males and 94 females) to mitigate gender bias. A patient with an improvement ≥7 OKS was considered a responder. We trained our QNN classifier on a randomly selected training subset of 113 patients to classify responders from non-responders (73 responders and 40 non-responders) in pain and function at one year. Outliers were hidden from the training dataset but not from the validation set. Results We tested our QNN classifier on a randomly selected test subset of 57 patients (34 responders, 23 non-responders) including outliers. The no information rate was 0.59. Our application correctly classified 28 responders out of 34 and 6 non-responders out of 23 (sensitivity = 0.82, specificity = 0.26, F1 Statistic = 0.71). The positive and negative likelihood ratios were 1.11 and 0.68, respectively. The diagnostic odds ratio was 2. Conclusions Preliminary results on a small validation dataset showed that QML applied to data-driven clinical decisions for the personalized treatment of advanced knee osteoarthritis is a promising technology to reduce computational complexity and improve prognostic performance. Our results need further research validation with larger, real-world unstructured datasets, as well as clinical validation with an artificial intelligence clinical trial to test model efficacy, safety, clinical significance, and relevance at a public health level.

Keywords: biologic therapies; joint preservation; osteoarthritis knee; personalised precision medicine; quantum machine learning.

Grants and funding

The authors (N.H., S.O., and D.M.) declare that they have received support for the present manuscript in terms of the provision of data and study materials. In the past 36 months, the authors have received grants from public research institutions and contracts from biomedical device companies pertaining to the fields of digital health, digital medicine, and osteoarthritis. The authors have received and are likely to receive in the future royalties, licenses, consulting fees, payment, or honoraria for lectures, presentations, speakers’ bureaus, manuscript writing, or educational events. Some parts of the Quantum Circuits and Artificial Intelligence algorithms are copyrighted and the authors are likely to patent some of the content. The authors hold stock and stock options directly and indirectly in publicly traded and private biotech, medtech, digital health, and healthcare companies. The authors declare no other competing interests.