NHS England will trial a combination of AI and robot-assisted care to speed up the detection and diagnosis of lung cancer, the deadliest disease in the UK.
The trial comes as the Health Service promises to give all smokers and ex-smokers the chance to be screened for lung cancer by 2030.
It said that expansion would lead to an estimated 50,000 lung cancers being diagnosed by 2035, 23,000 of which would be at early stages, saving thousands of lives.
The disease is a particular focus of the government’s upcoming national cancer plan for England as it is the UK’s biggest cancer killer, mirroring historically high rates of smoking. it It is claimed that 33,100 people die in a year Across the UK, around 91 a day.
It is also an important area for improvement because it is a vivid example of health disparities that reflect people’s wealth. It affects poor people so disproportionately that it accounts for an entire year of the nine-year gap in life expectancy between the most and least deprived areas of England.
NHS chiefs hope deploying AI and robotic technology will help doctors uncover more cases, allowing treatment to start sooner and increasing the chances of patient survival. The trial will be conducted at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust in London.
Professor Peter Johnson, national clinical director of cancer for NHS England, said: “This is a glimpse of the future of cancer detection.”
In the trial, AI software will analyze lung scans and alert doctors to the presence of small lumps – some only 6 mm long, the size of a grain of rice – that are most likely to be cancerous.
A robotic camera will then guide the miniature instruments used to perform the biopsy, creating a tissue sample that can be analyzed in the laboratory more accurately than existing techniques. This will allow potentially cancerous lumps hidden deep in one’s lungs to be removed and examined, which are currently difficult to detect.
NHS England said, “If this technology proves effective, it could help to transform lung cancer diagnosis as the NHS screening program is increasingly identifying more people with very small nodules who previously might not have been detected until much later.”
“For many patients, weeks of repetitive scans and procedures can be replaced with a half-hour cancer biopsy, reducing long-term uncertainty and avoiding more invasive surgery.”
The team behind the trial has already performed nearly 300 robotic biopsies, resulting in 215 people receiving cancer cures.
“Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in the UK, but diagnosing it at an earlier stage can significantly improve people’s chances of survival,” said Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of Cancer Research UK.
“New technologies like these have great potential, and trials must happen quickly to ensure they are accurate and beneficial to patients in the real world so innovations can reach everyone quickly.”
