Supporting the NHS Archives - Health Awareness https://www.healthawareness.co.uk/topic/supporting-the-nhs/ News, information and personal stories Thu, 29 Jun 2023 07:34:37 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://s3.eu-north-1.amazonaws.com/cdn-site.mediaplanet.com/app/uploads/sites/42/2019/05/07152244/cropped-health-awareness-logo-32x32.png Supporting the NHS Archives - Health Awareness https://www.healthawareness.co.uk/topic/supporting-the-nhs/ 32 32 Major opportunities for AI to aid in healthcare for chronic conditions https://www.healthawareness.co.uk/supporting-the-nhs/major-opportunities-for-ai-to-aid-in-healthcare-for-chronic-conditions/ Mon, 26 Jun 2023 11:05:29 +0000 https://www.healthawareness.co.uk/?p=35729 The Major Conditions Strategy can pave the way for NHS transformation while meeting the challenges of today, but only if we are willing to bet on artificial intelligence (AI) to address the high cost of chronic conditions. Most diseases are chronic rather than acute, affecting millions in the UK. With over 17 million people living … Continued

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Paul McGinness

CEO, Lenus Health

The Major Conditions Strategy can pave the way for NHS transformation while meeting the challenges of today, but only if we are willing to bet on artificial intelligence (AI) to address the high cost of chronic conditions.


Most diseases are chronic rather than acute, affecting millions in the UK. With over 17 million people living with chronic conditions, they contribute significantly to emergency admissions and account for 70% of inpatient bed occupancy.

Demand challenges in chronic conditions

The risk of developing chronic conditions also increases with age, and with the UK’s over-65 population set to increase by 5.5 million in the next 20 years, demand is outpacing supply. As healthcare costs rise and resources strain, it is evident that the current episodic care model for chronic conditions is failing.

To address these challenges, we need transformative models of care that harness the power of data and digital tools. Embracing digital home care can lead to earlier intervention in community settings for high-risk patients, preventing downstream hospital admissions. Likewise, using digital and information-sharing infrastructure can help expedite diagnostic services, significantly reducing waiting times.

AI tools in diagnostics, treatment and drug discovery

AI, in particular, holds tremendous promise in healthcare to revolutionise patient journeys and research. By analysing medical images with remarkable precision and speed, AI algorithms aid in more accurate diagnoses and can help offset the challenge of workforce shortages. AI can even predict disease progression and outcomes.

With more digital infrastructure in place to support chronic conditions, the drug discovery process will be expedited, leading to new treatments and therapies, and administrative tasks such as scheduling and medical coding can be automated, freeing up staff to focus more on care.

Leveraging the power of AI to address the growing burden of chronic conditions can be the transformative approach we need, enabling early diagnosis, personalised treatment, predictive analytics and streamlined administrative processes.

Safely and effectively using AI

Of course, as we adopt AI, we must also ensure that ethical considerations and safeguards are in place. Patient privacy, data security and transparency in algorithmic decision-making must be prioritised to maintain trust and accountability.

The forthcoming Major Conditions Strategy presents a unique opportunity to place AI at the forefront of healthcare delivery in the UK. By embracing AI, we can create a thriving National Health Service (NHS) for the next 75 years — one that delivers on the promise of a preventative healthcare model and where early interventions and personalised care become the norm.

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How standards support the sharing of information in the NHS https://www.healthawareness.co.uk/supporting-the-nhs/how-standards-support-the-sharing-of-information-in-the-nhs/ Fri, 23 Jun 2023 10:58:30 +0000 https://www.healthawareness.co.uk/?p=35652 Sharing information is vital to the functioning of the health and care service. This can include information for patient treatment, medications or at a population level to support risk stratification of patients and the management of care settings. We need to have access to structured information that can be disassembled and used in different ways … Continued

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Ian Townend

Chief Architect, Transformation Directorate, NHS England

Sharing information is vital to the functioning of the health and care service. This can include information for patient treatment, medications or at a population level to support risk stratification of patients and the management of care settings.


We need to have access to structured information that can be disassembled and used in different ways to support these activities. This could include creating a summary of someone’s care using a standard like the International Patient Summary, consuming a diabetic’s blood sugar readings to create a visual of their levels over time or ensuring that when a patient is admitted to a hospital, those providing care can maintain their medications.

Filling in gaps

To share information effectively, we need not just standards and specifications but consistent implementations. For some time, we have had this for administrative data like a patient’s demographics, but not across clinical data. There are several offerings in the market that provide some of this — but often to their own standard and not a shared one which everyone can use.

To share information effectively, we need
not just standards and specifications
but consistent implementations.

Clinical codes

A standard sets out the rules for a particular area such as SNOMED CT for conveying clinical codes (the semantic meaning), HL7 FHIR for messaging (the syntactic structure), NHS number for identifying the patient and a host of infrastructure standards to get the information from one point to another.

These need to be combined into a specification to set out how we will convey this information. For example, a FHIR patient resource to carry the NHS number and demographic details along with a condition resource with a SNOMED code such as 44054006 (the code for diabetes). Using this specification, a provider of data can be clear about how it should be exported from a system, and a consumer of this data can be sure about what they will receive from any number of providers.

This is harder than it may sound, but progress is being made with programmes like GPConnect (access to consistently structured data from general practice) and structured discharge summaries. Key to the success of this effort is working with key partners, including the Professional Record Standards Body supporting content standards and discovery and INTEROPen supporting technical specifications and hackathons.

Some great training resources are available across standards with further resources coming in the new year. The forthcoming Standards and Interoperability strategy from NHS England will set out the direction of travel for this area.

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Why CTCs and liquid biopsies could one day revolutionise NHS cancer care https://www.healthawareness.co.uk/supporting-the-nhs/why-ctcs-and-liquid-biopsies-could-one-day-revolutionise-nhs-cancer-care/ Thu, 01 Jun 2023 14:52:37 +0000 https://www.healthawareness.co.uk/?p=35135 Circulating tumour cells are tumour cells shed from the primary tumour and now circulate in the bloodstream. They carry core information and could improve cancer care for NHS patients in the future. Circulating tumour cells (CTCs) can help clinicians diagnose cancer and identify tumour characteristics, potentially leading to targeted treatment. However, CTCs are hard to … Continued

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Anne-Sophie Pailhes-Jimenez

R&D Director, ANGLE

Circulating tumour cells are tumour cells shed from the primary tumour and now circulate in the bloodstream. They carry core information and could improve cancer care for NHS patients in the future.


Circulating tumour cells (CTCs) can help clinicians diagnose cancer and identify tumour characteristics, potentially leading to targeted treatment. However, CTCs are hard to isolate.  

Difficulty capturing and harvesting circulating tumour cells  

Liquid biopsy company ANGLE specialises in harvesting CTCs with a simple blood test using advanced technology. They provide testing services for clinical and pharmaceutical research and are participating in a global study on potential clinical uses of CTCs in cancer patient management. They utilise liquid biopsy to harvest CTCs from a patient’s blood — rather than a solid tissue biopsy — for analysis.  

Anne-Sophie Pailhes-Jimenez, the company’s R&D Director in Europe, explains: “Studying circulating tumour cells is challenging because the quantity of cells you can measure is potentially quite low. 

“There is no other technology on the market that is as advanced as ANGLE’s at capturing and harvesting those cells with the potential to guide clinicians on patient management.” 

Liquid biopsy has the potential to transform
treatment decisions for cancer patients.

Advantages of liquid biopsy over tissue biopsy 

Liquid biopsy has the potential to transform treatment decisions for cancer patients as it enables repeat, non-invasive biopsies for diagnosis and monitoring of cancer.  

With traditional tissue biopsy, as many as 31% of patients lack accessible tissue. It also increases the cost of patient care and turnaround time for results. Pailhes-Jimenez explains: “Where a tissue biopsy can be done once — maybe twice — this blood test can occur whenever the clinician needs it.” It can also provide valuable, complementary information to traditional solid tissue biopsy.  

“Our study in longitudinal monitoring aims to provide real-time information, so clinicians can see what’s happening in the tumour; for example, whether the tumour is responding to the treatment. This helps to predict a patient’s response to treatment — and to improve their survival prognostic,” she adds.  

Studying uses for CTCs and optimising care  

ANGLE’s thousand-patient clinical study includes patients in the UK and USA. “Our preliminary focus is on breast cancer, and we have US-FDA clearance for a CTC platform for metastatic breast cancer. We are also looking at other cancer types such as prostate, ovarian and lung cancer,” says Pailhes-Jimenez. 

The study aims to prove whether CTCs can provide clinicians with more information to put patients on the right treatment path without long waits. She adds: “We hope to help produce a faster and most personalised medicine that complements existing patient management.” If successful, CTCs could make cancer care in the UK more accessible and reduce NHS waiting times.  

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