Peninsula Health develops automated post-endoscopy cancer detection system

The tool cuts treatment wait times for unexpected cancers by 43%.

Australia’s Peninsula Health has developed a “Post-Endoscopy Pathway” to provide automated cancer detection.

The system matches a patient’s histopathology results with their endoscopy report before scanning the documents for selected keywords.

The initiative has reduced the time taken for patients with unexpected cancers to receive specialist treatment by 43% since its implementation.

“Manual checking of the results is standard practice, and when you are performing thousands of procedures each year, inevitably it raises the possibility that some will get missed,” said Marcus Robertson, Peninsula Health’s Head of Gastroenterology.

The tool automatically generates an email alert to gastroenterology staff if a possible malignancy is identified.

Meanwhile, the service’s gastroenterology team is working with surgical colleagues to further streamline the pathway, ensuring that once a malignancy is detected, an appointment is made available for the patient at the next specialist clinic.