A group of UGM students, Kayla Queenazima Santoso (Biomedical Engineering 2020), Fathan Hudyaussie Santoso (Information Technology 2019), Mutia Fitri Akmalia (Dentistry 2019), and Safhira Anggraini Putri (Dentistry 2020) created an Android application that can be used for oral cancer screening. The machine learning-based application was named ‘Sinoma.” Sinoma is a project under the guidance of Dr. Sunu Wibirama funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture, Research, and Technology in the 2021 Karya Cipta Student Creativity Week (PKM) event.
“With Sinoma, we hope more people will care about oral cancer. (We hope) patients can get treatment for oral cancer at an early stage so that it increases the chance (of) recovery,” said Kayla on Monday (6/9).
According to data compiled from the Global Cancer Observatory (an institution under WHO or World Health Organization), there were 5,780 new cases of oral cancer in 2020 in Indonesia. Kayla et al. see that treatment of oral cancer is constrained due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Many oral health facilities are closed, even if they are opened, the number of visitors or patients is limited, which results in reduced opportunities for people to do check-ups. If these conditions are not immediately addressed, they will be fatal to the community. Late diagnosis of oral cancer will have greater impact.
“In severe cases, the cancer area can get bigger, so the patient may have to lose a lot of mouth area because it has to be removed,” explains Kayla.
Kayla said that Sinoma was presented so that the public could independently detect oral cancer as early as possible. By only taking pictures of the suspected mouth part, Sinoma users will receive a prediction of whether the mouth part is affected by oral cancer or not. Application users will also be given action recommendations after receiving the prediction.
Sinoma also provides various information about oral cancer, including prevention efforts, characteristics, and the process of treating oral cancer itself. To make it easier for users, Sinoma also has a guide for using the application.
“This is in line with the goal that we want to achieve, which is to create an early screening system that is easy for the general public to use, educative, and safe even during a pandemic,” concluded Kayla.
For the record, Kayla emphasized that Sinoma is for screening purposes only and not for getting a diagnosis. Relevant users are still advised to visit a specialist to get a diagnosis.
Currently, Sinoma is still under administration process. After it is complete, the application is ready to be used by the community.
