Kayla O’Sullivan-Steben is a PhD student in the Medical Physics Unit at McGill University. She recently finished her MSc project, whose goal is to empower patients through access to personal healthcare data and data donation. In practice, this entailed creating three new interfaces in the Opal patient portal: (i) an imaging section where patients can view their medical scans, (ii) a radiotherapy section that presents a customized explanation and 3D rendering of a patient’s treatment plan, and (iii) a research menu where patients can participate in and donate data to ongoing research studies.

In Fall 2021, Kayla started her PhD in the Department of Physics at McGill University, where she will build on the Radiation Oncology Knowledge Sharing (ROKS) research in the Kildea Lab. This project will develop digital twin technology for radiotherapy treatments to treat cancer patients in the virtual world and predict their treatment outcomes before treating them in the real world.