Reducing Cancer Waiting Times by 90% through Healthcare Technology
Reducing Cancer Waiting Times by 90% through Healthcare Technology
AI-powered cancer diagnosis reduces the anxious wait for patients from weeks to days.
LONDON, UK. – Tuesday 4th of August 2020
YouDiagnose is a clinical healthcare company that provides a solution to enable early cancer diagnosis for healthcare organisations using Artificial Intelligence. We have an innovative new model for the management of outpatient referrals which will reduce the current patient waiting times.
Currently, patients must wait several weeks to get a suspected cancer pathway referral but with YouDiagnose’s Early Cancer Management System, we will be able to reduce this wait time to one or two days.
90% of delayed cancers occur in the primary care sector and research has shown that it is attributed to three main factors:
- lack of patient participation or awareness
- misdiagnosis in primary care
- delayed referral to secondary care
Our Early Cancer Management System will actively engage with patients before their GP visit. This is done by the patient downloading an app into which they will enter their medical history and lifestyle details. The app, via predictive analytical tools, will automatically start the triage process. By doing so the solution will prioritise those ‘at risk’ from cancer and provide the correct education and information for others.
Of the current 363,000 cancer patients in the UK, 115,000 of them will face some form of treatment delay. YouDiagnose will bring about radical changes in community cancer management and prevent such delays.
Currently patients have to visit their GPs several times before getting a hospital referral. As per the NHS National Cancer Patient Experience Survey, more than two in five patients diagnosed with cancer in the West Midlands and Staffordshire required repeated visits to their GP before being sent for tests. This is a trend reported by All Can Survey.
To compound the issue, the hospitals are met with poor quality referrals from the GPs that deprioritise those at risk from cancer. As per the Pulse article, hospitals rendered ‘untouchable’ by coronavirus measures have led to 75% of referrals getting rejected in some areas and ‘reverse delegating’ patients back to primary care. Setting the right synergy between the primary and secondary care in resource-starved settings is not an easy task and this is where YouDiagnose can make a difference by providing the specialist care to the community. Reducing the time to a cancer diagnosis can improve the quality of life and cancer survival at a much-reduced cost.
The aim of our system is to democratise cancer expertise and take the core expertise of the cancer management from the four walls of cancer centres and hospitals to the community, thereby, maximising the prospect of early diagnosis. The immediate saving from early cancer diagnosis will be at least £150 million to the NHS while the total benefit will be in excess of several billion pounds annually.
The system has been tried and tested on large datasets and is ready for deployment in the NHS and private hospitals. Dr Aswini Misro, the founder of YouDiagnose and a surgeon in the NHS, says, “In 2014 to 2016, the level of inequality, or gap, in life expectancy between the most and least deprived areas of England was 9.3 years for males and 7.3 years for females. By use of technology, we can reduce the disparities in cancer care arising from geographic location, socio-economic factors, ethnicity and genetic factors and the readily available access to healthcare. Our goal is also to drive self-sustainability into the healthcare ecosystem, improve patient safety and cancer survival.”
“We are in a fight against time in our efforts to support the NHS during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said YouDiagnose Chief Operating Officer, Dr. Nick Housby, who is also the director of Genomic Medicine Centre (UK). “YouDiagnose will undoubtedly increase the pace and scale at which the NHS can overcome the cancer diagnosis backlash of this pandemic and save hundreds of lives.”
YouDiagnose is now ready to start its pilot with three NHS trusts. Due to funding issues because of the COVID-19 pandemic, YouDiagnose has announced the launch of its own crowdfunding campaign. The campaign has a target of £1 million to deliver a pilot of the YouDiagnose solution to NHS cancer services.
The launch of the crowdfunding campaign takes place in parallel with the publication of a new book authored by Dr Aswini Misro, ‘Patient 2.0 – Beyond Consumer, Victim or Survivor – Navigating the healthcare maze.’ The book reveals systemic healthcare flaws and shines a light on how to overcome them through technology-enhanced solutions.
About YouDiagnose
YouDiagnose works with healthcare organisations around the world to accelerate early, accurate cancer diagnosis for everyone, everywhere. #KnowSoonerLiveBetter.
For more information, please visit www.youdiagnose.online