NHS England to trial AI and robotic tools to detect and diagnose lung cancer | Lung cancer
NHS England will trial a combination of artificial intelligence and robot-assisted care to speed up the detection and diagnosis of lung cancer, the deadliest form of the disease in England.
The trial comes as the health service pledges to offer all smokers and ex-smokers the chance to be screened for lung cancer by 2030.
This expansion will lead to an estimated 50,000 lung cancer diagnoses by 2035, of which 23,000 will be at an early stage, which could save thousands of lives.
The disease is a particular focus of the government’s upcoming national cancer plan for England because it is England’s biggest cancer killer and reflects historically high smoking rates. IT It is claimed that 33,100 people die annually Around 91 per day across the UK.
It is also an important area for improvement because it is a striking example of health inequalities that reflect people’s well-being. It affects poor people so disproportionately that it accounts for a full year of the nine-year life expectancy difference between the most and least deprived parts of England.
NHS chiefs hope the use of artificial intelligence and robotics will help doctors uncover more cases, allowing treatment to start earlier and improving a patient’s chances of survival. The trial will be held at Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS trust in London.
“This is a look into the future of cancer detection,” said Prof Peter Johnson, NHS England’s national clinical director for cancer.
In the trial, AI software will analyze lung scans and alert doctors to tiny lumps that are likely cancerous, some just 6mm long, the size of a grain of rice.
A robotic camera will then direct the miniature instruments used to perform the biopsy, producing a tissue sample that can be analyzed in the laboratory with more precision than current techniques. This will allow for the removal and examination of potentially cancerous nodules that are hidden deep within someone’s lung and are currently difficult to detect.
“If shown to be effective, the technology could help transform the diagnosis of lung cancer, as the NHS screening program increasingly detects more people with very small nodules that would previously have gone undetected until later,” NHS England said.
“For many patients, weeks of repeated scans and procedures can be replaced with a single half-hour cancer biopsy, reducing long-term uncertainty and preventing more invasive surgery.”
The team behind the trial has already performed nearly 300 robotic biopsies, leading to 215 people receiving cancer treatment.
“Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the UK, but being diagnosed at an earlier stage can significantly increase people’s chances of survival,” said Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of Cancer Research UK.
“New technologies like this have great potential, and testing needs to be done quickly to make sure they are accurate and useful for real-world patients, so innovations can reach everyone more quickly.”
