Former GP Dr Bea Bakshi was inspired to create C the Signs — a digital tool that helps GPs spot the early signs of cancer — when she spend a hospital nightshift looking after a sick patient who turned out to have incurable pancreatic cancer which had tragically gone undetected. The patient’s reaction was “stoic”, she recalls, but his blunt question stayed with her: “Why was my cancer diagnosed so late?”
This experience was “harrowing for me”, she says, “but it also seemed like an obvious problem we needed to solve upstream”. Most cancers are diagnosed in primary care but, at 58%, early detection rates are poor and “we have few tools or technologies to help GPs with identification,” she explains.
Once deployed in a GP practice, C the Signs integrates with electronic patient records and uses AI technology to spot patients at risk of cancer. “It processes all the information very quickly – in less than a minute,” says Bakshi. “It predicts what type of cancer they may be at risk of and recommends the best pathway for them based on their risk and the availability of local services.”
C the Signs is already being used in 1,400 surgeries, and early results are impressive: it has so far identified 40,000 patients across 50 cancer types, and areas using it have seen a 50% reduction in cancer diagnoses in A&E and a 50% improvement in diagnosis time. The software has 99% sensitivity to cancer, compared to 54% for a GP.
With results like that, why isn’t everyone using it? Bakshi says most ICBs either don’t have funding at all, or have ring-fenced money that can’t be spent on primary care. “Primary care attracts less than 10% of NHS funding,” she says. “We often judge hospitals by how well they manage the front door — the A&E department. But primary care is the front door for everything in healthcare, so why aren’t we investing there?”
In a remarkable coup for the NHS, Alder Hey Hospital’s Kate Warriner has been voted the UK’s top digital chief by IT industry leaders. She tells Craig Ryan about what made the Liverpool kids’ hospital a technology powerhouse and why innovation and transformation is more about human beings than machines.
Managing AI responsibly will be one of the biggest challenges facing NHS managers in the coming decade. Governments are keen to ride the latest technological wave, but trust in AI varies wildly and big questions about governance and regulation remain unanswered, writes Craig Ryan.
The threat of potentially catastrophic cyber attacks on the NHS has increased “really dramatically” in recent weeks and is still “accelerating”, NHS England chief Sir Jim Mackey has said. His warning came just weeks after NHSE’s board was warned by its own digital experts that NHS job cuts posed an “unmitigated” risk to cybersecurity.
MiP’s annual event for workplace representatives, Reps Day, returns to Birmingham on 17-18 November. It’s an opportunity to meet fellow reps from across the country for a day of learning, networking and policy discussion.
MiP says regulation alone will not improve the NHS culture around raising and acting on concerns, following the findings of the Thirlwall Inquiry into the Lucy Letby case.
TUC Congress has backed a motion calling for an evidence-based and fully resourced plan for NHS management, with unions warning that cutting management capacity risks shifting essential work onto clinical teams.
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