The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has announced in its draft guidance that nine artificial intelligence (AI) technologies will be used to help plan external radiotherapy treatment for different types of cancer, including lung, prostate and colorectal cancer.
The recommendation aims to speed up the time taken to produce outlines of healthy organs, in order to help target cancer cells while avoiding healthy cells nearby, which can save healthcare professionals (HCPs) time and money.
For manual contours, a review stage currently takes place. New evidence has suggested that AI is quicker than manual contouring, including the time it takes for HCPs to review and edit the AI contouring.
In a recent Swedish study, evidence suggested that using AI technology was quicker and as accurate as HCPs in successfully screening and detecting breast cancer in 244 people, while also halving the screening times of standard care scan assessments.
Evidence that has also been reviewed by NICE’s independent medical technologies advisory committee showed that AI technologies produce similar quality contours of the organs at risk as those carried out manually, with only minor edits needed.
Currently, radiographers mark up images by hand to highlight organs at risk of radiation damage, lymph nodes and the cancer site.
Experts advising the committee gave time-saving estimates of 10 to 30 minutes per plan, depending on the editing needs, and clinical evidence suggested it could range from three to 80 minutes per plan.
Sarah Byron, programme director for health technologies at NICE, said: “These technologies could decrease the time required to complete a plan so they are able to use their expertise planning the most complex of cases of radiotherapy or free up time to deal with other patient-facing tasks.”
According to NHS England’s radiotherapy dataset, between April 2021 and March 2022, there were 134,419 reported radiotherapy episodes.
Along with the consideration of technology costs of around £4 to £50 per plan, NICE calculations showed that, at the lowest time of saving – three minutes per plan – 75,000 contour plans would be AI-generated, saving the NHS around 3,750 hours.
Health and social care secretary Steve Barclay said: “Smart use of tech is a key part of our NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, and we’re establishing an expert group to work through what skills and training NHS staff may need to make best use of AI.”
More evidence is needed before NICE can carry out a full cost and benefit analysis.