endoscope-i

Overview

endoscope-i Ltd have created the Telescopic referral pathway to streamline the management of patients with a potential head or neck cancer. It uses their own designed line of endoscope adapters, which connect an endoscope to the camera of an iPhone enabling HD recording of the endoscopic image, and an associated app. The combination of these products allow the remote diagnosis and management of patients. This fast and innovative way of assessing patients for the early detection of throat cancer integrates into patients' hospital records, with Cloud Gateway providing the secure remote access into the Health & Social Care Network (HSCN).

This digitally integrated approach to delivery of a procedure, typically only found in a hospital setting, supports improved patient outcomes, reduces waiting times and decreases time to diagnosis. It has been created by an expert team of ENT specialists committed to ensuring access to clinical experts is easy and fast.

The Background

According to Cancer Research UK, head and throat cancers are the 8th most common type of cancer, affecting over 12,000 patients every year, which is an average of 34 new diagnoses per day. Since the early 1990’s these types of cancers have increased by a third, with men most likely to suffer, but incidences with women are rising at a higher rate than in men.

In the last decade mortality rates have increased by a seventh. Early diagnosis is critical and typically screening is done based on age and whether or not you have been a smoker.

The Technology

The Telescopic referral pathway was conceived by a team of head and neck/ENT specialists to support faster diagnosis of cancer at earlier stages and to offer early screening to those patients that may fall outside of usual screening programmes. Historically these cancers were diagnosed with a large endoscopic stack system, which is an expensive piece of kit and based solely in a hospital setting.

The team developed an app to use a mobile phone as an endoscope, transforming what is an expensive diagnostic procedure into a streamlined process, using a cheaper mobile device.

Our Partnership

We are connectivity and security specialists, working with health organisations to deliver intelligent networks, capable of supporting a connected health ecosystem. For endoscope-i, we provide our Health Connect platform for them to securely connect their data from AWS to the Health & Social Care Network. We ensure that their data is exactly where it needs to be for their skilled consultants to analyse the imagery from the patient examinations and report back. The partnership allows endoscope-i to deliver better outcomes and experiences for their patients.

Digitally Empowered Patients

Utilising an iPhone app makes it quicker and easier to provide an endoscopy service within primary care through a cloud based application. This results in faster diagnosis and better accessibility to expert healthcare, communicating results directly to the patient translating to a vastly improved understanding of their condition. The software enables all patients to receive expert analysis of their symptoms with all images stored securely in their hospital patient record. The video history is always available for review if a patient is ever referred back into the pathway at a later date.

Using the app presents an opportunity to empower primary and community clinicians to use connected technology, to take a quick look at the patient and send the image to a consultant, allowing for a much faster diagnosis. This serves to reduce pressures on secondary care and to provide an enhanced treatment path for the patient.

Connected Health with Cloud Gateway

Health Connect is a core component of our SASE platform. It enables secure, on-demand access to the Health & Social Care Network. We can connect users, sites and cloud environments to the HSCN in a matter of minutes, allowing IT teams to easily connect and secure all of the organisation's resources, data and users in an agile, cost effective and scalable manner.

The Impact

Our partnership with endoscope-i is delivering a range of benefits for patients, including:

• Streamlined cancer diagnosis process adhering to the 28 day Faster Diagnostic Standard

• Improved early detection of cancer

• Bringing specialised endoscopy to primary care clinical settings

• Increased efficiency in secondary care

• Improved patient communication, experiences and outcomes