United States: The experts have issued a warning against NHS actions of focusing on “magic bullets” of new technologies and artificial intelligence instead of concentrating on the basics of cancer treatment and not risking the lives of thousands of patients.
More about the news
According to a paper published in the journal Lancet Oncology, the statement by nine prominent cancer doctors and experts revealed that NHS’s cancer care is lagging far behind in terms of survival rates compared to other developed countries.
Poor performance of NHS in cancer treatment
A report reveals that since December 2015, the NHS has not been able to meet it’s of reaching 85 percent of cancer patients, to begin treatment within two months, as the Guardian reported.
Research done by scientists from other countries showed that a delay of every four weeks is proportional to a rising risk of up to ten percent.
In other words, when hundreds of thousands of individuals will be waiting months to begin life-saving cancer treatments, and just 62 percent are able to start their treatment within 62 days.
The published report underlines ten pressure points that would be contributing to entrenched cancer survival inequalities, along with diagnosis and treatment delays, as well as inefficient care.
Novel cancer solutions wrongly hyped- Experts
Severe criticism by experts says that cancer “novel solutions” like new diagnostic tests have been hyped as “magic bullets” for cancer treatment, which is rightfully wrong; however, “none address the fundamental issues of cancer as a systems problem.”
Moreover, as per the authors of the report, a “common fallacy” of NHS leaders is that they assume that new technologies can reverse inequalities.
However, in reality, such tools like AI could also create “additional barriers for those with poor digital or health literacy.”
The paper said conclusively, “We caution against technocentric approaches without robust evaluation from an equity perspective,” as the Guardian reported.
What more are the experts saying?
According to Ajay Aggarwal, the paper’s lead author and a consultant oncologist and professor of cancer services and systems research at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, it is being asked to completely stop R&D work to develop new tech. However, it is also clear that this is not directly going to improve patients’ prognoses, as the Guardian reported.
He said, “The discussion around AI, tech, liquid biopsies, is slightly reductionist as a solution to cancer care,” and, “AI is a workflow tool, but actually, is it going to improve survival? Well, we’ve got limited evidence of that so far. Yes, it’s something that could potentially help the workforce, but you still need people to take a patient’s history, to take blood, to do surgery, to break bad news.”