Innovative App Determines Prostate Cancer Risk Level

App for individualized prostate cancer prevention opens up new possibilities.

Aarau, Switzerland — The ProstateCheck app promotes early detection of the dangerous disease and helps to prevent unnecessary screenings by extending previous check-up intervals of one year for 75% of men by up to seven years. It creates a risk analysis within seconds and therefore allows general practitioners, specialists and private individuals to get a quick, reliable analysis.

“The ProstateCheck app is intended to remind men of their prostate cancer screening early on”, explains Prof. Dr. Franz Recker, Chairman of the Swiss Prostate Cancer Research Foundation and Head of Urology at the Aarau Cantonal Hospital. “At the same time, it is important that we don’t screen everybody annually but instead focus on those who are at risk.” ProstateCheck, which was co-developed by Dr. Recker and his colleague Dr. Maciej Kwiatkowski, prevents unnecessary examinations, for not every tumor that is detected early on needs to be treated. Between 30% and 40% of men will have tumor cells in their prostate at some point that do not require treatment. However, every day 6,000 men worldwide develop a malignant tumor in their prostate. Often it is detected in a later stage, which causes success rates for treatment to sink drastically.

The app is based on the most comprehensive long-term study of prostate cancer screenings in the German-speaking region and calculates the likelihood of prostate cancer based on the user’s individual, medical data that he receives during an ordinary check-up. Alongside required information such as the PSA level and the user’s age, information about any family history of prostate cancer, the results of the palpation, and the volume of the prostate increase the precision of the ProstateCheck prognosis. Based on the user’s information, the app uses specially developed algorithms to calculate the probability of a malignant tumor. Besides, the probability of the user developing prostate cancer in the next four, eight and twelve years is calculated. The app can extend the amount of time between screenings by up to seven years. The resulting reduction in the frequency of prostate examinations will serve to increase the efficiency of medical screening processes, reduce unnecessary diagnoses, and greatly reduce the cost burden on the health-care system.

The ProstateCheck app is available for download from 2 Euros in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store for Android devices. The app is available in English, German, Hindi, Chinese, Arabic and Spanish.