Hope for cancer patients as NHS tracking system could prevent treatment delays

Cancer patients could be spared the devastating consequences of their tissue samples being lost thanks to a new tracking system being tested in the NHS.

The loss of tissue samples can mean vulnerable patients are forced to redo biopsies, therefore delaying diagnosis and treatment. Lost samples cost the NHS an estimated £157m in claims every year.

However, losing samples could soon be a thing of the past in the NHS, as one of the UK’s largest health trusts tests a new tracking system its inventors hope will lead to a rollout in hospitals worldwide.

Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, which deals with tens of thousands of cancer cases every year, will trial a real-time tracking system for cancer tissue samples.

The system is based on radio frequency identification (RFID) technology that is widely used in the retail and logistics industry to track assets and has been specially adapted to help improve treatment for people with serious and life-threatening conditions.

Dil Rathore, the trust’s biomedical scientist and pathology innovation lead said, "The stress and anxiety felt by patients awaiting a potential cancer diagnosis can be made much worse if they are told their sample has been lost. Unfortunately, this ‘never-event’ happens more often than is acceptable. That’s why we came up with a real-time system to track the precise location of each sample and its movement through our histopathology department. The interpretation of changes in tissue forms the foundation of successful cancer treatment.”

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Source: inews, 21 July 2024