New data published by NICE (The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) has directly compared the cost and capacity benefits of DERM pathways against face-to-face and non-AI teledermatology.
Over the past decade, England’s dermatology services have experienced an unprecedented level of demand.
With more than 700,000 referrals made last year via the urgent suspected cancer pathway, and year on year growth of referrals reaching more than 10% every year since 2020, many services have sought to implement new models of care to better balance demand against limited dermatology capacity – an area where growth has been markedly more constrained.
With Trusts and ICBs across England exploring different models – including pathways using Skin Analytics’ DERM, our AIaMD for skin cancer detection, new data published by NICE (The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) has directly compared the cost and capacity benefits of DERM pathways against other models to help services understand the cost and capacity-releasing savings of AI for them.
Earlier this year, NICE published its Early Value Assessment (EVA) recommending DERM, our Class III CE-marked AI medical device (AIaMD), for use in urgent skin cancer referral pathways while further evidence is collected.
At the time, NICE stated that:
‘Comparative evidence suggests that DERM may be able to identify a cancer lesion with similar accuracy to teledermatology or face-to-face dermatology assessment, with further evidence suggesting it could halve the number of referrals to dermatologists within the urgent skin cancer pathway while maintaining patient safety.”
NICE’s guidance recommends that patients with Fitzpatrick V and VI skin types undergo a dermatologist review following DERM assessment. Over the next 3 years, more evidence will be collected to finalise a full NICE approval.
Now, NICE has taken another important step: publishing new data that highlights the capacity-releasing savings and associated cost avoidance possible when using DERM in the USC pathway in secondary care settings.
In particular the model supports comparison of the cost and capacity-releasing savings of DERM pathways against the following:
The data can be used to assess both national and local savings.
The new data can be reviewed using the resource impact tool on NICE’s website.
With transparent calculations based on publicly available data and BAD guideline appointment lengths, trusts can now:
Use the NICE Resource Impact Tool and enter specific local data to see potential savings.
The newly published data highlights the significant effect autonomous AI can have on skin cancer referral pathways:
Following an analysis of each of the potential models of care (traditional face-to-face pathways, teledermatology, and DERM pathways), NICE finds that pathways incorporating autonomous AI assessment of skin cancer referrals consistently deliver the greatest capacity and cost savings.
When implemented without AI, teledermatology actually requires more dermatologist capacity over the full patient pathway (dermatologist review + percentage of appointments subsequently requiring a F2F appointment) than DERM pathways (AI assessment and triage) or Face-to-Face. With DERM pathways, AI is able to safely discharge a significant percentage of benign cases with no clinician input.
Based on NICE’s default assumptions, deploying DERM across NHS England could save more than 115,000 hours of dermatologist time every year as well as £24m in cost savings compared to a non-AI teledermatology rollout.
With limited numbers of dermatologists working across the NHS, optimising the use of their time is critical. With more than 9 in 10 urgent referrals assessed as benign, patients with cancerous lesions are waiting longer to access care. Waiting times for patients on routine pathways – where more than one third of melanomas are detected – are even longer.
Releasing capacity at scale through AI and using this to assess patients on routine pathways could enable significant progress on reducing waiting lists for urgent and routine treatment.
Use the NICE Resource Impact Tool and enter local data relevant to your organisation to see potential savings [LINK]
For more information, support using the Resource Impact Tool or to discuss how DERM pathways could support your organisation to free up capacity within your urgent suspected skin cancer pathway, speak to us.
