The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre has published its new strategy for 2025 and beyond, outlining plans to “Be Digital”, along with work on collaborations, digitally transforming services, empowering patients and staff, and using data to drive cancer research and innovation.
Clatterbridge will be working with partners in the NHS University Hospitals of Liverpool Group, formed last year across five adult acute and specialist trusts including Liverpool Heart and Chest, Liverpool University Hospitals, Liverpool Women’s, and The Walton Centre. The group is focusing on opportunities for integration and collaboration, moving toward the implementation of a single EPR and digital strategy, and developing a research and innovation strategy that brings together expertise from across these organisations.
The trust acknowledges the “significant opportunity” that the group collaboration offers to tackle fragmentation between digital systems, enhance interoperability, and support more effective information sharing. Shared digital platforms such as converged EPRs and other clinical systems can help better coordinate care and support decision-making between back-office functions and the frontline. “We will support the integration of digital systems across the UHL Group, including the introduction of a single EPR, to streamline workflows and support decision-making between back-office operations and front-line workers, improving clinical safety and patient communication,” it states.
The trust looks to optimise digital clinical systems to improve how care is delivered, digitally transforming cancer services to promote a more joined-up and efficient model of care. “We will know we have succeeded when we have embedded data and digital solutions across our sites and services to improve care, and when we have secured an intuitive set of core clinical digital systems that provide good quality data,” it states.
A big part of the trust’s new strategy is around empowering cancer patients, carers, and staff. Digital solutions will help support choices for access, promote care at home, and keep patients, families, carers, and staff connected and “in control”. The vision of success, according to the Clatterbridge, is patients and carers being able to access their clinical information, manage appointments, plan their care, and be supported at home with the help of digital solutions. For staff, this will look like having the right equipment and digital skills to support their work, playing an active role in the design and delivery of digital solutions, and being confident in the use of digital tools and systems.
In the strategy, the Clatterbridge also makes a commitment to data-driven cancer research and innovation, horizon-scanning and using data to shape future services. It shares the importance of being open to doing things differently and developing a clear programme to support emergent technologies such as AI and robotic process automation. Specifically, the trust is exploring the potential for AI to help support its workforce in ensuring diagnostic accuracy and personalising treatment plans, and for RPA to automate “repetitive and time-consuming” administrative tasks like appointment scheduling and patient record management. The trust similarly notes the need to foster a culture of innovation, granting staff the skills and permissions to innovate, putting in place processes and governance to help them secure funding for innovations, and forming partnerships with academic and commercial organisations.
Digital in cancer care
A recent HTN Now webinar took an in-depth look at how technology is transforming skin cancer care at the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust, exploring successes in reducing two-week wait referral time from 57 days to 12 days, looking at challenges for implementing this approach, and sharing advice to other healthcare organisations looking to implement similar digital pathways. Sandy Anderson, consultant dermatologist at Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust, and Gabi Cohen, director of delivery at Isla Health, joined us to share their insight and experience on the project, which won in the HTN Awards category Case Study of the Year.
The Royal London Hospital has highlighted the impact of the use of a virtual platform for its children’s cancer ward, reportedly enabling children deemed well enough to be monitored from home. Launched in 2023, the trust noted that children with cancer are at an increased risk of infection, and when “a patient develops a fever they need to be admitted to hospital for at least 48 hours, where they can be at further risk of picking up other illnesses”. However, with the virtual ward in place, those deemed well enough after an initial assessment can return home to be cared for.
The Department of Health and Social Care has announced a centralised system for cancer patients, built into the Federated Data Platform. The Cancer 360 tool collates data points across tests, appointments and treatments, displayed via a dashboard. DHSC highlights how this will help “track a patient’s progress and support personalised treatment plans”.
