Patient’s bowel cancer detected by artificial intelligence

A woman who was part of a study using artificial intelligence to spot bowel cancer is free of the disease after it was found and removed.

The patient from South Shields took part in the Colo-Detect study as part of a trial at ten NHS trusts, and for which around 2,000 patients have been recruited.

In the trial, the AI flags up tissue potentially of concern to the medic carrying out the colonoscopy, which could be missed by the human eye.

The AI detected several polyps and an area of cancer on the patient’s colonoscopy.  She then underwent surgery at South Tyneside District Hospital and has since recovered.

Professor Colin Rees, gastroenterology consultant at Newcastle University, led the study alongside a team of colleagues working at South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Trust.

The trial also includes North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust, South Tees NHS Foundation Trust, Northumbria NHS Foundation Trust and Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Professor Rees described the trial as “world-leading” in improving detection, adding AI was likely to become “a major tool used by medicine in the coming years.”

The findings will be studied to see how it can help save lives from bowel cancer, the second biggest killer cancer, claiming around 16,800 lives a year in the UK.

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Posted by Karen Motley, Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (jacquelinevance@chadlaw.co.uk), medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.

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