Cancer digital playbook

This resource provides support to clinical teams and organisations that are looking for digital tools that support the delivery of patient pathways. We concentrate on cancer pathways and how to share diagnostics and deliver monitoring and support to patients. We welcome feedback on the playbooks, including ideas for further case studies. To get in touch, please email digital.playbooks@nhs.net

Scenarios

Communicate with professionals and patients

Digital tools and patient portals to support communication between health care professionals or with patients.

Share clinical information across organisations

Digital solutions to ensure clinical data, images, pathology and radiotherapy information are fluidly transferred into the right system and patient record for optimal patient care.

Monitor patients’ conditions remotely and support patients as they live with and beyond cancer

Digital tools to support patients self-management and remote clinics with the use of, for example, self-monitoring tools, chemotherapy toxicity management tools, patient initiated follow-up (PIFU) and active surveillance of patients to reduce any unnecessary follow up appointments on a cancer pathway.

Improve the early and faster diagnosis of cancer

Digital solutions to increase the proportion of cancers diagnosed early in primary care and rapid diagnostic centres (RDC), to make the referrals process more seamless for suspected cancer working with secondary care.

Pathway

Cancer pathway

Explore case studies at different steps along the cancer pathway

Case studies

Optimising endoscopy surveillance timing through automated vetting

Guy’s and St Thomas’ Trust hosts a framework to enable the automated vetting of some endoscopy requests with the aim of optimising endoscopy surveillance timing.

Person examining a patient's neck with an iPhone using the endoscope-i app

Using endoscopic mobile imaging to streamline head and neck cancer pathway referrals

Combining endoscopes with high-quality mobile photography to create an app that can be used in primary care.

Online cancer education platform for healthcare professionals

Online cancer education for healthcare professionals

An online education platform to improve symptom recognition, referral and cancer outcomes by facilitating earlier diagnosis and improving patient experience.

A digital NHS service that allows advance and urgent care plans to be created and shared for coordinated care

A digital service that allows digital care plans to be created and shared for coordinated care

An online portal which enables healthcare professionals to create and share patients wishes and preferences via a digital urgent care plan and share them with health and social care professionals.

Futureproofing neuropathology diagnosis with digital pathology imaging

Use of digital slides for all primary diagnosis at the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.

A teledermatology pilot to improve cancer care in Leeds

Leeds teledermatology skin cancer pilot to assess two-week-wait (2ww) referrals

An AI decision support tool to help healthcare professionals in primary care to identify patients at risk of cancer earlier

An AI support tool to help healthcare professionals in primary care to identify patients at risk of cancer earlier

A digital multi-platform clinical decision support tool which uses AI mapped with the latest research to accelerate early identification and survival of patients at risk of cancer

A mobile app to support breast cancer patients in healthcare and self-management in Kent

An app which enables patients to access accurate and reliable digital information about treatment or diagnostic tests they may have during their breast cancer care.

Teledermatology using e-Referral Service advice and guidance at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital

Teledermatology using e-Referral Service Advice and Guidance (e-RS A&G) at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital

Using eRS to provide advice and guidance remotely to improve referral management and streamline patient pathways.

A digital follow-up care model providing remote monitoring to reduce the need for unnecessary hospital appointments for patients

The Southampton-led model aims to provide patients timely access to test results. The prostate model has been replicated across 15 hospitals and continues to develop the service for other tumour groups and non-cancer long-term conditions.

Breast cancer app to offer patients personalised medical support throughout their treatment

A patient support tool to improve the outcome of cancer treatment, applying real-time patient reported outcome data.

Cancer-specific electronic patient record to support clinical teams and patients where follow-up care can be managed remotely

A single digital record to enable patients to take control of their condition across multiple healthcare organisations.

Teledermatology assessment service for combined routine and 2-week wait (2WW) skin lesions

A teledermatology service for suspected skin cancer which allows assessment to take place from a GP surgery, reducing the number of patient journeys.

Patient portal in Wirral University Teaching Hospital

Patient portal to help patients manage their own conditions and reduce the number of outpatient appointments.

Using intelligent automation to improve the triage and referral management pathway

NHS Lothian wanted to automate the triage of referrals to the gastroenterology service thereby releasing clinician time to be spent with patients.

Oncology noting direct to the Electronic Patient Record

Sharing clinical information within and outside organisations to ensure clinical data is available rapidly across the organisation and to primary care at improved pace and to approved standards.

Teletriage service for two-week wait referrals

A secure platform to take and share images for teletriage service.

An evaluation tool to embed assurance of delivery of best practice radiotherapy to lung cancer patients

An evaluation tool to embed assurance of delivery of best practice radiotherapy for lung cancer patients

Lung cancer treatment using advanced stereotactic ablative arc radiotherapy. It requires a complex planning process and highly accurate delivery and results in ablation of tumour with minimal harm to other tissues.

Sending clinical correspondence electronically to primary care

The Trust has implemented a messaging service for sending clinical letters and discharge summaries to GPs digitally.

Screening text reminder programme to increase the uptake of routine screening appointments

A message service which enables patients to be contacted at any time by text message, letter and/or phone call..

Service evaluation of a blood test which uses AI to produce a calibrated probability that a symptomatic patient has cancer

A rapid response service to help prioritise cancer referrals and make the diagnosis process more streamlined.

Using a template to support cancer care reviews

A template to be used in a primary care setting to encourage physicians to provide patients who are diagnosed with cancer a good quality, robust personalised review.

Digital resource to assist primary care with diagnosing and managing cancer patients

A clinical decision support and workflow optimisation solution that is being used in GP practices.

Using a mobile application to empower neuroendocrine cancer patients

King’s College Hospital used a mobile app to educate patients with neuroendocrine tumours regarding their condition, and enable them to record quality of life and patient-reported outcomes for review by their clinical team.

Using digital follow-up assessments to reduce unnecessary face-to-face appointments

A digital solution to significantly reduce face-to-face follow-up appointments, improve the patient experience, and enable staff assessment of patient follow-up needs.

Digital enablement through a virtual, regional rapid diagnostic centre

Digital solutions were used to support referral management, patient administration and requesting of tests across a region.

How Yorkshire Trusts are delivering better and more efficient care through integrated clinical imaging

A new network enables every patient to attend an appointment and have full availability of their medical images and associated reports at the point of care.

Oncology e-prescribing integrated with an electronic patient record

Oncology electronic prescribing integrated with an electronic patient record

Electronic patient record (EPR) system expanded at The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre to provide a safe and effective electronic drug administration process for haemato-oncology.

Breast Pathway Management solution is in use by teams at North Manchester General Hospital (part of the Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust)

Trust benefits from a toolkit to combine clinical solutions and enable access to real-time information to support clinical decision-making and patient care.

Supporting GPs with electronic cancer decision support (CDS) tools

Enabling the early diagnosis of cancer by encouraging primary care professionals to ‘think cancer’ through the use of prompt functions and symptom-checkers.

Electronic safety netting (E-SN) toolkit for EMIS Web by the North Central London Cancer Alliance

Electronic safety-netting (E-SN) toolkit for EMIS web by the North Central London (NCL) Cancer Alliance

Joined up system helps GPs to ‘safety net’ potential cancer patients, enabling collaboration across a practice team.

A mobile platform to allow patients to track, manage, and understand their care from home

A mobile platform empowering patients to better self-manage.

Cancer webinar

Watch the cancer digital playbook webinar presented on 16 November 2021.

Disclaimer

These case studies summarise user and patient experiences, focussing on:

digital solutions along different care pathways
productivity improving digital solutions
how to open source code for health and care organisations

Unless expressly stated otherwise, the apps and digital tools referenced are not supplied, distributed or endorsed by NHS England or the Department of Health and Social Care and such parties are not liable for any injury, loss or damage arising from their use.

All playbook case studies have either passed, or are currently undergoing the Digital Technology Assessment Criteria (DTAC) assessment.

Please note the full legal disclaimer: NHS Transformation Directorate playbook disclaimer