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03
Feb
New AI tool promises to shorten cancer diagnosis times at Harrogate hospital
The time it takes to diagnose lung cancer in our area could fall dramatically, thanks to a new AI (artificial intelligence) tool that entered service at Harrogate District Hospital this morning.
The software, developed by Australian company Annalise.ai, acts like a second pair of eyes for clinicians, allowing them to prioritise the review of the chest x-rays identified as suspicious or requiring further investigation.
It can detect up to 124 potential findings on chest x-rays in under a minute, helping to speed up the diagnostic process.
People diagnosed with lung cancer at the earliest stage are 20 times more likely to survive for five years than those whose cancer is caught later.
The technology is already in use with NHS Grampian, where it has reduced the time between chest x-ray assessment and starting lung cancer treatment by an average of nine days, and the proportion of cancers identified at earlier stages has increased by 27%.
The software has been introduced by the Yorkshire Imaging Collaborative (YIC) – the collective name for the six NHS trust radiology departments working together across West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts (WYAAT).
Dr Daniel Fascia, consultant musculoskeletal radiologist at Harrogate District Hospital and clinical lead for the YIC, said:
This technology will greatly speed up the time it takes for clinicians across our trusts to accurately report and diagnose each x-ray, helping us to reduce historical backlogs in our organisations, spanning back to the Covid-19 pandemic.
This will be the sixth AI deployment YIC has been involved with in the last two years, and I’m grateful to our teams for their support throughout the deployment of this new technology.
Chest x-rays provide clinicians with useful information not only about lung cancer, but also about infections such as pneumonia or empyema, and can help to rule out other conditions such as fluid in the lungs or complications caused by misplaced feeding tubes. The software provides clinicians with comprehensively annotated images to help with clinical decision-making.
Dimitry Tran, co-founder and deputy CEO at Annalise.ai, said:
Following successful deployment into clinical use across multiple NHS sites in the last two years, we are delighted that this announcement means our solution is being deployed across West Yorkshire and Harrogate.
This will unlock significant benefits for many more patients and clinicians alike covering a third of all chest x-rays processed in the UK.
Funding for the technology has been secured through NHS England's AI Diagnostics Fund (AIDF), which was established to accelerate the deployment of AI imaging and decision support tools to help diagnose lung cancer patients more quickly.
The funding will provide £21 million to 11 imaging networks, covering 64 NHS trusts across England, to support them with early lung cancer detection.
The Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, Peter Kyle MP, said:
As someone who has lost their mum and dad to cancer, I know how important it is to accelerate medical innovation, through genuine collaborations like this one, to prevent this disease from breaking up families.
The roll-out of this AI tool in Yorkshire’s hospitals proves that by working together, researchers, businesses and our NHS can harness the potential of emerging technologies to save lives up and down the country.
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