Sussex Integrated Care System (ICS) has worked with South, Central and West (SCW) to adopt a new tool to support its bowel screening programme.
The ICS has been working with SCW’s geospatial team on a web application to identify hotspots of low bowel screening uptake and high cancer positivity rates within their area.
As a result, a bespoke mapping tool has been created for the ICS and geospatial team to view a local picture including screening, age group and gender data. Some of the datasets supporting the application include; ONS Postcode Directory, Department for Communities and Local Government and data from NHS Digital.
The ICS and SCW highlighted the challenge they wanted to address, stating: “In general, bowel screening data is only available at a generalised level. Sussex ICS wanted to be able to identify issues at a localised level. The link between lower take-up of bowel screening and deprivation and ethnicity had already been identified. Less, however, was known about the detail of links with gender and age. There was a real concern that screening uptake was going in the wrong direction within certain demographics.”
Mark Hannigan, Sussex ICS Cancer Interface Manager, commented: “Working with South, Central and West to map our cancer data has revealed so many opportunities to improve our patient care. The granular data mapping linked to known inequalities data in the same areas has shown us some significant gaps in provision where previously the higher level PCN views appeared to show no concerns.
“We have mapped bowel screening and referral data with the support of the CSU so far and aim to expand on this to include mortality and cancer staging in the near future. To be able to see more opportunities to engage and target patient groups within local communities and groups from prevention to palliative care will be invaluable as an ICS.”
Read more on the project here.
