Precision oncology has given physicians more ways to treat cancer. It has also created a harder problem: keeping up with the evidence needed to decide which treatment makes sense for which patient, and when that evidence changes. At the 2026 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, more than 7,000 studies were presented across areas including pancreatic, lung, prostate and other cancers, with findings covering survival, recurrence, disease progression and quality of life.
The volume is a sign of scientific progress. It is also a reminder that the traditional way of managing evidence is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. The problem is not that oncologists lack access to information.
They have almost too much of it. A physician trying to answer a specific question may need to move between clinical guidelines, published studies, regulatory decisions, biomarker information, clinical trials and conference findings. Each source serves a purpose, but the information is rarely organized around the exact patient sitting in front of the physician.
That creates a dangerous paradox. Medicine is becoming more precise while the evidence infrastructure supporting those decisions remains fragmented. A diagnosis such as lung cancer can now involve numerous biologically and clinically distinct patient populations.
Biomarkers, disease stage, previous treatment and molecular characteristics can all influence which therapies are relevant. The more precisely we define patients, the more precisely we need to organize the evidence that informs their care. Clinical guidelines remain essential.
Systematic literature reviews remain essential. Neither should be discarded because AI has arrived. But neither was designed for an environment in which evidence can change continuously.
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