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Overview

This symposium, hosted by the Royal Society and the Academy of Medical Sciences, explored advances in the diagnostics sector and the opportunities and challenges towards building capacity and capability within the UK.

Read the conference report summarising the event (PDF).

Background

Over 1.5 billion diagnostic tests are carried out in the NHS each year. These diagnostics, which include medical images, pathology tests and genomic tests, are crucial to the detection and diagnosis of disease and guiding subsequent treatment in a targeted way. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of the diagnostics sector and the need to increase testing capacity and capability to tackle current and future health challenges. As healthcare systems transition towards a greater emphasis on prevention and early detection, diagnostics will become an increasingly important component to ensuring good health for the nation. This will require innovative approaches to both the development of new diagnostic tools, and in how we support their adoption and delivery into the healthcare system.

This event followed the Academy’s FORUM workshop on ‘Building a sustainable UK diagnostics sector’, and brought together scientists from industry and academia, experts from the wider scientific community and patients with lived experience to discuss how to build the UK’s diagnostics capacity and capability. Speakers explored successful case studies of novel emerging technologies in a variety of diagnostic modalities. The meeting finished with a panel discussing the challenges and opportunities around launching new diagnostic products into the healthcare system.

About the conference series

Supported by AstraZeneca, the meeting forms part of the Royal Society’s Transforming our future conferences in the life sciences, and the Academy of Medical Sciences’ FORUM programme. These meetings are unique, high-level events that address the scientific and technical challenges of the next decade. Each conference features cutting edge science from industry and academia and brings together leading experts from the scientific community, including regulatory, charity and funding bodies. 

Organisers

Schedule


Chair

13:05-13:15
COVID-19 and diagnostics: an opportunity for renewal and growth

Speakers

13:15-13:35
The digital health revolution: empowering the consumer

Abstract

"Remote/Wellness/Digital Data Healthcare" has the potential to halt and reverse the increase in healthcare costs, to improve healthcare and streamline its delivery whilst proving acceptable to the public. In order to underwrite professional and public acceptance the first part of an individual’s health journey – the diagnostic test – must perform to gold standard, be cheap, simple and intuitive to use and deliver a molecular result or series of molecular analyses, in minutes, with results uploadable into a health record. Elaine has teamed up with the Founders of some of the most successful point of care device companies – QuantuMDx, Binx, ClearBlue and GeneDrive and will present their vision for the future of UK Diagnostics from an empowered decentralised/consumer perspective.

Speakers

13:35-13:45
Empowering the patient in the UK diagnostics vision

Abstract

This presentation will take the patient perspective on the opportunity to improve diagnosis, management and research of disease through improved technology and collaboration. 

Speakers


Chair

14:00-14:15
Volatile organic compound analysis as a non-invasive breath test to detect cancer

Abstract

Early gastrointestinal cancer typically has non-specific symptoms that could be wrongly attributed to common benign conditions. It is not feasible to refer all patients with gastrointestinal symptoms to have endoscopy as it is invasive, expensive and consumes NHS resources. Breath testing has ideal characteristics for a triage test as it is non-invasive and acceptable to patients. This talk will discuss the use of volatile organic compound (VOC) analysis to detect oesophagogastric and colorectal cancers, the sources for VOC production and the challenges to translate VOC analysis into a diagnostic platform technology in clinical practice.

Speakers

14:15-14:30
Integrated Radiogenomics for Unravelling Tumour Heterogeneity and Treatment Monitoring

Abstract

Cancer is caused by genetic alterations and frequently arises as a clonal growth from a founder cell. The subclonal heterogeneity provides the basis for inter-metastatic heterogeneity which is of utmost clinical importance. New tumor sampling techniques and circulating tumor DNA methods may allow for more comprehensive evaluation of clonal composition. As both primary tumors and metastatic lesions are spatially and temporally heterogeneous they would require multiple biopsies, which still doesn’t allow for a complete characterization of the tumor genomic landscape. Therefore, imaging has great potential for a comprehensive evaluation of the entire tumor burden as it is noninvasive and often repeated during treatment in routine practice. While initial retrospective radiogenomics studies have shown high prognostic power they do not provide any spatial information as quantitative imaging features are averaged over the entire tumor. This approach ignores spatial heterogeneity readily apparent on imaging highlighting the need for well-designed prospective radiogenomics studies focused on meaningful integration of phenotype and genotype.

Speakers

14:30-14:45
The Promise of Digital Pathology and Artificial Intelligence in Histopathology

Abstract

Digitally enabled care is core to delivering current and future healthcare services. Histopathology (Cellular Pathology) has been highlighted as in need of innovation by the routine use of digital pathology platforms for reporting rather than microscopes. Once this digital pathology infrastructure is in place, this enables AI assistance for pathologists in diagnostic reporting together with the promise of deriving novel insights into disease biology which are not possible with a human observer. Despite the promise and rapidly developing traction, barriers still exist to adoption of these technologies. In this talk I will outline real life experiences of deploying these technologies in practice with specific reference to my sub speciality of urological pathology and outline future directions.

Speakers

14:45-15:00
Point of care diagnostics

Abstract

 

Speakers

15:00-15:30
Panel Q&A

Speakers


Chair

15:45-16:45

Abstract

This panel discussion will focus on innovation and commercialisation, adoption by the NHS and general population, and the challenges of funding and policy. Consideration of regulations from the start of the pipeline will also be covered.

Speakers

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