LONDON – 19 JULY 2023: A revolutionary breast cancer diagnostic technology could save the NHS £287 million if adopted, a new study has found.
The independent health economic study, carried out by Health Tech Connect and commissioned and funded by the UK government, concluded that the AI-powered tool would present huge savings in healthcare with much lower acquisition costs, transportation fees and a reduced prescription of chemotherapy, by as much as 30%. If the tool was utilised for other areas of cancer across the NHS it would offer even greater savings
Most breast cancer biopsy results are currently air freighted to the US for analysis at huge cost to the NHS – and the environment. The 40-page study found that Digistain’s technology eliminates this need, therefore reducing the NHS carbon footprint by 460 tonnes.
Digistain has been inducted into the highly selective NHS Innovation Accelerator programme – mandated to help transformative or impactful innovations spread throughout the NHS quickly.
Clinical data unveiled at the American Society of Clinical Oncology
In Chicago last month showed that Digistain demonstrated similar diagnostic accuracy to the current National Institute for Health and Care Excellence-approved cancer test.
The health economic study concluded: “The results indicate that the greatest cost savings can be achieved by offering Digistain as a substitute. Digistain proves to be an optimal alternative to the currently offered tumour profiling test, as it delivers non-inferior health outcomes while generating cost savings…Implementing Digistain as a substitute for the current care would lead to improved health outcomes. The innovation proves to be more cost-effective for post-menopausal women.
“The results indicate that Digistain can lead to statistically significant cumulative savings of an average of £286.7 million for an intermediate-risk patient population once rolled out as a substitute.”
An Executive Summary of the independent economic study is available by contacting Digistain.
UK-invented Digistain is currently being adopted around the world by hospitals in India, Thailand, Ecuador, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Myanmar and Indonesia, with deals in the US and parts of Africa imminent. It is being trialled by a number of UK NHS trusts.
It has also gained support from breast cancer survivor and patient advocate, actress Samantha Womack who has called for its adoption by the NHS, and was selected as one of the Top 10 clinical studies of the year by the American Society Of Breast Surgery.
Sharaz Khan, NHS Head of Pathology at the Northampton General Hospital, which is an early adopter of Digistain, said: “Digistain cuts down wait times for results massively when compared to our current provider who is sending samples to Texas for analysis. The turnaround time with Digistain is much quicker, it is more accurate and cheaper.
“The backlogs caused by the pandemic and industrial actions mean that fast-paced technology like this can really be the difference between life and death.
“I have worked for the National Health Service for 25 years and it is innovation like this that will open up a new digital pathway and frontier for the NHS – and help future-proof it. It can only be a matter of time before Digistain is adopted across the whole of the NHS.”
Digistain’s mission is to reduce the inequality of healthcare around the world and improve its provision in poorer nations across Asia and Africa. It is extremely cost-effective and has passed clinical studies and peer review, gaining market clearance from the UK’s Medicines & Healthcare Regulatory Agency.
Digistain CEO and clinical scientist Dr. Hemmel Amrania, who invented the technology, said: “Digistain is at the forefront of rapid and cost-effective personalised cancer treatment decision-making. This affordable new technology speeds up biopsy analysis where time and swift action are precious commodities.
“This new and independent study demonstrates the significant economic and emissions savings that the NHS could achieve by adopting Digistain. This is a dynamic solution and one that speeds up the process, reducing anxiety for patients and cost. Ultimately, and most importantly, we hope Digistain can help to save many thousands of lives.”
The radical AI concept was developed at London’s Imperial College and Cancer Research UK laboratories under the guidance of decorated pathologist Sir Nicholas Wright and designed with input from 1500 oncologists. It has been successfully trialled with patients from the Nottingham University Hospital and London’s Charing Cross Hospital. Last year, the company was awarded an Institute of Physics Business Start-Up award.
Around 50,000 people are diagnosed with breast cancer in the UK each year, with around 11,500 resulting in death. Impacts of delays in diagnosis will result in an estimated 5000 excess deaths from breast cancer for the period 2020-2030.
The cutting-edge technology does not rely on a traditional fixed assessment of chemical analysis. Instead, it uses optical scan technology to capture a unique spectral signature from each biopsy creating over 10,000 data points unique to the individual biology of a patient. Artificial intelligence is then used to analyse the imaging data and calculate a Digistain Prognostic Score that precisely and objectively identifies the risk of cancer recurrence.
The technology has been successfully validated in prominent cancer centres of excellence and has demonstrated gold-standard equivalency to NICE-approved traditional tumour profiling tests. The research has also been recognised in the industry with a string of prestigious awards. These include the Imperial College Outstanding Research Award, a Royal Society Innovation Award and the Cancer Research UK Pioneer Award.
NOTES FOR EDITORS:
MEDIA CONTACT: Dominic Mohan +44 (0)7824 428240
COMPANY CONTACT: James Chandler james@digistain.co.uk
ABOUT DIGISTAIN:
Digistain is a cancer diagnostics company that has developed an MHRA-cleared technology that transforms the prediction of breast cancer recurrence risk from a slow expensive manual wet-lab process to a rapid affordable AI-enabled solution. The technology enables physicians to reduce informed actionable treatment decision times from months and weeks to days and hours – all at a dramatically lower cost. The technology is based on over 15 years of research and development pioneered by respected cancer scientists from the NHS, Cancer Research UK and Imperial College together with input from over 1500 oncologists.
Digistain has been successfully validated in prominent cancer centres of excellence and demonstrated gold-standard equivalency to NICE-approved traditional tumour profiling tests in disease-free survival and overall survival prediction, with equivalent sensitivity, specificity and improved reproducibility.
ABOUT DR. HEMMEL AMRANIA, CEO:
Dr. Hemmel Amrania is a clinical scientist specialising in pathology, with particular interest in tumour grading, clinical trials and medical technology innovation. He graduated with honours from London’s Imperial College in the field of Physics with Mathematics. He pursued his Masters in Optics and Photonics at the SupOptique, Université Paris XI in France. Hemmel returned to Imperial College to complete his PhD on the biomedical applications of ultrafast laser spectroscopy. During his PhD he patented a novel device to grade tumour biopsies that eliminated non-concordance due to subjective bias. For this work there, he was awarded the President’s Award for Outstanding Research at Imperial College. Later, along with Professor Chris Phillips, he was recipient of the Royal Society Innovation Prize and also the Cancer Research Pioneer Award. He worked at London’s Charing Cross Hospital on clinical trials under Senior Medical Oncologist Prof. Charles Coombes and subsequently Prof. Sir Nicholas Wright, the renowned pathologist and Head of Pathology at Cancer Research UK. While at the hospital, he qualified in clinical trials design and medical statistics. After learning of the economic and patient care challenges faced by breast oncologists in determining patient risk – UK patients wait weeks for test results at a cost of several thousand dollars per test report per patient – he sought to apply his research to solve this problem. He developed Digistain – a radically faster and cost-effective way to select patients who could safely forego chemotherapy to improve patient outcome while saving the health payer significant costs.
