Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust launches a post-referral service for suspected skin cancer with Skin Analytics!
Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust are a General Manchester based trust who are opening their doors again to urgent suspected skin cancer referrals – only this time the post-referral service will use AI Teledermatology.
By leveraging our AI medical device, DERM, the Trust aims to reduce unnecessary face-to-face clinics for patients with benign lesions and utilise Trust resources appropriately. DERM will enable the discharge of benign cases back to the GP and reserve Trust dermatology capacity for patients who really need to be seen or receive treatment.
Tameside and Glossop are one of the additional nine NHS trusts awarded SBRI funding to pilot DERM, and approximately 4,000 patients within the area will benefit from our technology just in time for summer – when skin cancer referrals are at their highest.
Dr Loma Gardner, Consultant Dermatologist at Tameside Hospital, said: “We know the outcomes of a cancer diagnosis are better the earlier treatment begins, so trialling the DERM technology is a positive step. By implementing DERM into our pathway, we will expand our dermatology capacity by discharging patients with benign lesions without the need for an appointment and freeing up clinical time to see patients who really need us.”
So how does it work?
After a patient who is worried about a mole or skin lesion has been referred on the Urgent Suspected Cancer pathway, the patient will be contacted with details of an appointment at the AI-driven teledermatology clinic.
Before attending the clinic, the patient is notified to fill out a medical history questionnaire.
At the clinic, the patient’s medical and lesion history is confirmed and their suspicious mole or skin lesion is captured using validated hardware.
These images are then uploaded to the Skin Analytics platform where DERM – the only UKCA Class IIa AI as a Medical Device for dermatology – will assess and classify in seconds.
DERM is trained to classify 11 different lesion types including the most common malignant, pre-malignant, and benign skin lesions.
This allows NHS organisations, like Tameside and Glossop, to discharge patients with benign lesions earlier in the pathway and prioritise patients that need to be seen.
Since 2020, Skin Analytics have been supporting NHS dermatology teams and are currently deployed across 15 NHS sites in both primary and secondary care. During that time, DERM has been used in pathways that have seen more than 92,000 patients and identified more than 10,000 cancers.
Skin Analytics are working for a world where no one dies from skin cancer, and it’s great to see the team at Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust are motivated to be a part of it.