Delivering personalised, timely follow-up care after prostate cancer treatment is becoming increasingly complex. To support clinicians and improve continuity of care, the Department of Radiation Oncology at Mayo Clinic has developed the PSA Control Tower: an intelligent monitoring solution that uses AI to help identify early signs of disease recurrence.
Traditionally, prostate cancer follow-up relies on fixed schedules and manual review of test results. While effective, this approach is time-consuming and can delay action when subtle but clinically relevant changes occur. As patient volumes rise and care pathways become more complex, health systems face growing pressure to deliver reliable follow-up without increasing the burden on care teams.
PSA-values
At the heart of prostate cancer monitoring are prostate-specific antigen (PSA) values and their trends over time. Individual test results are informative, but early detection of recurrence requires continuous oversight and timely interpretation. The PSA Control Tower brings together PSA trends and broader clinical data to support clinicians in identifying which patients may need attention, and when.
The solution is built on Mayo Clinic Platform, a secure data environment that provides access to large volumes of de-identified patient data. Using information from lab results, clinical notes, imaging and pathology, data science teams develop predictive models that assess recurrence risk. These models continuously learn and improve as new data become available.
Dashboards
Clinicians access the insights through clear dashboards that visualise PSA trends and highlight potential concerns. Importantly, the system does not replace clinical judgment. Instead, it supports decision-making by bringing relevant information to the surface earlier, allowing care teams to stay closely connected to patients while keeping human expertise and compassion central to care.
“Our hope is that the PSA Control Tower will be a rare win-win-win for patients, physicians and hospital systems,” says Mark Waddle. “The Control Tower allows every patient to be monitored 24/7, providing reassurance that follow-up aligns with guidelines and that abnormal PSA values are acted upon promptly.”
Scalable model for precision oncology
The PSA Control Tower aligns with Mayo Clinic’s Bold. Forward. strategy for precision oncology, combining advanced analytics, secure data access and seamless clinical integration. As the model scales beyond Mayo Clinic, it offers a blueprint for more efficient workflows, earlier detection and data-driven follow-up care for prostate cancer patients.
By focusing clinical expertise where it is needed most, AI-supported monitoring enables care teams to see more new patients, manage increasing complexity and deliver truly personalised follow-up, at scale.
Diagnosis in one day
A couple of months ago the UK National Health Service (NHS) announced the launch of a large-scale trial of an AI system designed to accelerate prostate cancer diagnosis from weeks to just one day. The technology analyses MRI scans within minutes, helping to prioritise high-risk cases and reduce delays caused by radiologist shortages.
Up to 15 NHS hospitals will test the system on around 10,000 MRI scans. If successful, a national rollout will follow. The AI assigns a risk score to each scan, allowing high-risk patients to be fast-tracked for radiologist review and same-day biopsy, while low-risk patients can receive rapid reassurance.
Clinical experts stress that the AI supports rather than replaces clinicians, acting as an “extra pair of eyes”. By shortening waiting times and improving efficiency, the trial could mark a significant step forward in prostate cancer care.
