Humber and North Yorkshire Cancer Alliance has awarded a share of £135,000 to three projects run by Humber Health Partnership aiming to improve cancer services and outcomes for patients. The funding is awarded as part of the Cancer Research and Innovation Awards, designed to help turn ideas into improvements to services for those living with, or being tested for, cancer.
One of the projects, SACT ePROMs, is a software for monitoring patients undergoing systemic anti-cancer therapy. It reportedly allows patients to report their own progress and symptoms, aiming to create capacity for teams to conduct additional patient reviews.
A further two projects from Humber Health have also been granted a share of the funding, with one looking to extend a trial of dermoscopy-guided removal for skin cancer, to achieve better surgical margins and avoid repeated excisions. The trust shares hopes that the trial may ultimately lead to the treatment becoming available in hospital dermatology and community health services.
The final project, the WID-easy Test for Endometrial Cancer Triage, is a new test for endometrial cancer using a minimally-invasive swab to avoid a more invasive procedure for peri and post-menopausal women with abnormal bleeding.
“Our funding gives teams the opportunity to turn strong ideas into evidence, whether that means making diagnosis less invasive, bringing care closer to home, improving treatment capacity or tackling inequalities in access,” said Lucy Turner, managing director of the Humber and North Yorkshire Cancer Alliance. “We look forward to working with the successful teams and sharing what their projects achieve for patients across Humber and North Yorkshire.”
Wider trend: Innovation in cancer care
A partnership has been launched between the DATA-CAN data research hub for cancer hosted at Leeds Teaching Hospitals and the West Midlands Secure Data Environment to support access to high quality cancer data for researchers. The partnership draws on pseudonymised patient data from patient records at major cancer centres across the UK, including on diagnosis, treatments, test results, and patient outcomes. The first dataset has been uploaded to the WM SDE, with three further datasets currently in development, Leeds Teaching shares.
AI enabled breast cancer screening is reportedly helping patients at Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust (HDFT), thanks to the introduction of a new scanner funded by £40,000 from the Harrogate Hospital & Community Charity. The AI enabled HER2 tissue scanning system works by capturing high resolution digital images of breast cancer tissue samples, using an AI algorithm to help pathologists assess HER2 status by detecting the presence of the HER2/neu gene that can be a cause of breast cancer, the trust shares.
The UK Government has published its National Cancer Plan for England, backed by billions of pounds worth of investments in areas such as digital diagnostics, and informed by almost 12,000 responses to an earlier call for evidence from individuals and organisations. By 2035, half a million procedures will use robotic surgery, it suggests. AI tools such as Ambient Voice will help reduce staff time lost to admin tasks, and AI will assist oncologists in planning radiotherapy “more quickly and accurately”, with recommendations from a GIRFT study into maximising productivity in radiotherapy services to be implemented as soon as it is published.
