- The overwhelming majority of patients referred into secondary care
with suspected head and neck cancer (HNC) do not have cancer
(~95%).
- During the COVID-19 pandemic telephone triage of patients with
suspected HNC was necessary. During this time, a validated HNC
risk-calculator, HaNC-RC-v2 (a set of symptomatology-based questions)
was recommended by ENT UK to stratify patients into high or low risk
of having HNC via telephone triage (1)
- Ufonia, a digital health company which uses an Artificial Intelligence
(AI) voice assistant to automate clinical conversations via telephone,
and *INSTITUTION*, were awarded an SBRI Healthcare grant to help
develop an AI-delivered HNC triage telephone call. This was based on
the HaNC-RC-v2 and co-created with HNC patients from the Heads2Gether
charity via round-table discussions and one-to-one sessions.
- Twenty-nine patients underwent a clinician-supervised AI-delivered HNC
triage conversation as part of their standard telephone consultation.
100% of calls were completed with an average agreement of 89%
between the clinician and the AI system for all symptoms asked. The
technology was highly acceptable to patients with a median net
promoter score (NPS) score of 8 out of 10.
- Novel technologies involving AI automated telephone calls can be
generated to remotely triage suspected HNC patients. This technology
may offer an exciting opportunity to help departments triage suspected
HNC referrals in an ever increasingly resource pressurised NHS.