eliminating the uk cancer care backlog...treatments have been delayed or cancelled, leading to a...

Eliminating the UK cancer care backlog

2 | BluePrism.com


Before the pandemic, patients showing any potentially cancerous symptoms had

a legal right to be seen by a specialist within two weeks of an urgent GP referral.

Typically, a diagnosis would have been made within 28 days and if needed, 95

percent of patients would begin treatment within 62 days from the original referral.

But in the current climate of severe healthcare rationing, these targets have simply

been abandoned. All those cancer pathways designed to catch the disease early

before it advances and spreads have been severely challenged.

While creating capacity for Covid-19 patients was crucial to deal with the initial outbreak, it has slowed down the effective

diagnosis and treatment of cancer across the UK. Coping with the pandemic has meant that routine screenings, urgent referrals and

treatments have been delayed or cancelled, leading to a huge backlog of patients requiring care. The impact statistics are staggering

with urgent cancer referrals down 60%.1 Cancer Research UK states that since lockdown started, around 2 million fewer tests that

help diagnose cancer have taken place. 2

According to Cancer Research UK, there are 367,000 new cancer cases in the

UK every year. 3 With survival for some of the most common types at least three

times higher with an early stage diagnosis, taking swift action is absolutely

critical. Researchers at the Health Data Research Hub for Cancer have examined

data from eight UK hospital trusts and found that in a worst-case scenario, if

delays continue, there could be up to 35,000 additional cancer deaths within a

year. 4

1. NHS England June 2020 https://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/news/uncategorised/gp-urgent-cancer-referrals-fell-by-60-in-april/

2. Cancer Research UK June 2020 https://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2020/06/01/impact-of-coronavirus-on-cancer-services-revealed-over-2-million-people-waiting-for-screening-tests-

and-treatments/

4 . DATA-CAN research July 2020 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53300784

3. Cancer Research UK https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics-for-the-uk#:~:text=in%20the%20UK..-,Cancer%20

incidence,new%20cancer%20cases%20in%202017

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60%

A robust response is now being undertaken to address these backlog challenges

across the UK. Local systems and newly formed cancer alliances are ring-fencing

diagnostic and surgical capacity for cancer, so that referrals, diagnostics and

treatment can be brought back to pre-pandemic levels and reduce the scale of

demand. To achieve this ambitious task, there still needs to be sufficient capacity

and capability to ensure that anyone referred with suspected cancer can be

clinically prioritised, diagnosed, treated promptly - and safely too.

It’s clear there’s a long way to go to have any chance of delivering these goals.

What also works against effectively managing cancer care, is an operating

environment that all too often consists of splintered and aging technologies,

with key patient data residing across multiple, disconnected systems. This issue

limits the NHS in leveraging one of its best assets; data, and the ability to share

it to better analyse, treat and prevent cancer. There are many points along the

patient journey; from the initial appointment to prioritising further diagnosis and

treatment, so there’s a need to accelerate the prioritisation and management of

all this fresh data and feed it into systems for swift action.

Taking action

reduction in urgent cancer referrals

fewer tests that help diagnose cancer have taken place.

2 MILLION

1. NHS England June 2020 https://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/news/uncategorised/gp-urgent-cancer-referrals-fell-by-60-in-april/

2. Cancer Research UK June 2020 https://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2020/06/01/impact-of-coronavirus-on-cancer-services-revealed-over-2-million-people-waiting-for-screening-tests-and-treatments/

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4 | BluePrism.com


Trusts and healthcare organisations therefore urgently require a more

standardised, collaborative way of working that overcomes poor system and

platform interoperability across disparate environments. A unifying agent that

breaks down these traditional barriers is intelligent automation. In practice this

means introducing a digital workforce you’re your processes. This scalable pool

of AI-powered digital workers is designed to easily interoperate with all care

management systems - across any type and age of operating environment.

The flexibility of scaling and adapting a digital workforce to support virtually any

process has fuelled the popularity of this technology. Wide-scale adoption of

Blue Prism’s cloud-based digital workforce amongst more than 50 NHS Trusts

is helping NHS organisations automate a wide range of activities across multiple

functions at unprecedented speed.

Taking this a step further, is a growing community of healthcare organisations

that are using Blue Prism Cloud to share their tried and tested automations via a

central digital automation library called the NHS Digital Exchange (DX). By doing

this NHS teams are able to accelerate the deployment of new automations faster

than ever and so implement changes that support cancer treatment activities.

So, what does a digital workforce look like? It’s a unique processing resource,

ready to be trained by people to automate any work process securely, across

any function, from front-office to back office. Digital workers excel at performing

joined up, data-driven, end-to-end activities across multiple operating

environments of complex, disjointed, difficult to modify legacy systems and

manual workflows too.

A new approach with intelligent automationImportantly for the healthcare sector, a digital workforce is highly trustworthy

– performing work with total integrity, making zero errors -all while, operating

hundreds of times faster than human workers. It’s a workforce that’s being

continually augmented with the latest cloud, artificial intelligence, machine

learning, and cognitive capabilities – utilising these tools to solve different work

problems – regardless of their complexity.

Crucially with digital workers, no legacy systems need to be ripped out and no

major process change or mass data migration is required. Transformation that

would traditionally be cost and resource prohibitive suddenly becomes much

faster and more easily achievable. New clinical work processes that are being

created in months and sometimes even days, would take IT programs and vast

teams of people, years to complete.

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Digital workers in action

Digital workers can significantly reduce the time between any type of cancer test

results being received and treatment being initiated by connecting the disparate

systems that all need to be updated in order to schedule the clinical staff and

the equipment. Co-ordination with the patient remains critical throughout and

the digital workers can help to streamline and accelerating clinical pathways.

In practice, this may involve sharing instant screening results with specific

hospital departments to cut waiting times, or utilise machine learning and OCR

capabilities to review MRI scans faster.

Delays to diagnosis and treatment may make some cancers inoperable. One

UK cancer charity is addressing this concern by ramping up its cancer testing

efforts to ensure that results are delivered back within 24 hours or less. It uses

digital workers to track diagnostic tests and as soon as results are issued, they

update the medical secretary or the patient directly, to book a follow up or pre-

assessment.

Increasingly, by combining AI and other cognitive technologies with a digital

workforce, healthcare providers are not only speeding up cancer diagnostics, but

improving accuracy and creating new opportunities too. In fact, an independent

study published in Nature Journal in January 2020, found that AI is more

accurate than doctors in diagnosing breast cancer from mammograms.5 Using

a digital workforce in tandem with data visualisation and machine-learning

techniques can help extract clinically useful knowledge from a huge amount of

data to then accurately answer key questions such as the cancer risk profile for

different patients.

New ways of working to fight cancer

Digital workers integrated with other AI tools can help pathologists execute

round-the-clock medical results for treating cancer cases. This most basic and

critical task of spotting the cancerous cell, is almost perfectly suited to a digital

worker. Unlike a human, it never tires and when it’s correctly trained, can deliver

incredibly precise results. Multiple libraries of images can be interrogated so

that when a clinician detects a tumour, the database can be searched to find all

similar tumours. This allows the pathologist to swiftly evaluate the treatment and

subsequent outcomes before designing an effective personalised treatment for

the patient.

5. Nature Journal January 2020 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1799-6

6 | BluePrism.com


Key steps for success For an intelligent automation programme to be sustainable and

successful in clinical environments, it needs to be strategically aligned

to a key goal - such as accelerating cancer treatments. Gaining

executive sponsorship from a CIO, CFO or head of innovation for the

programme right at the start will really help to sustain wider scale of

adoption further down the line.

To sustain further demand for automation also means always

communicating the benefits across NHS Trusts and other healthcare

organisations, engaging with the wider teams, breaking down silos

and educating staff about intelligent automation’s potential so they’re

encouraged to seek process opportunities.

Final ThoughtsForward-thinkers within the NHS are now pushing the envelope harder. They’re capitalising on medical expertise and

augmenting it with digital workers to create innovative solutions for better cancer treatment that neither human nor machine

could achieve by working independently. Ultimately, having a digital workforce means being able to provide a predictable

response at scale to any challenge, freeing clinicians to deliver even higher levels of care – at speed to satisfy overwhelming

patient demand for cancer treatments – now and in the future.

Blue Prism is the global leader in intelligent automation for the enterprise, transforming the way work is done. At Blue Prism, we have users in over 170 countries in more than 1,800 businesses, including Fortune 500 and public sector organizations, that are creating value with new ways of working, unlocking efficiencies, and returning millions of hours of work back into their businesses. Our intelligent digital workforce is smart, secure, scalable and accessible to all; freeing up humans to re-imagine work.

To learn more visit www.blueprism.com and follow us on Twitter @blue_prism and on LinkedIn.

© 2020 Blue Prism Limited. “Blue Prism”, the “Blue Prism” logo and Prism device are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Blue Prism Limited and its affiliates. All Rights Reserved. bp_Healthcare_CancerBacklog_ebook_H_sg_201030

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