Early Referral for Cancers

This application provides decision support to GPs on whether to refer adult patients with suspected cancers to specialist clinical teams. The system covers the following cancers:

  • Lung cancer
  • Upper gastrointestinal cancer
  • Lower gastrointestinal cancer
  • Breast cancer
  • Gynaecological cancer
  • Urological cancer.

 

The system follows the NICE guidelines in classifying referral to a specialist as either:

  • Immediate: the patient needs to be referred and seen within a few hours, or even more quickly if necessary; 
  • Urgent: the patient is seen within the national target for urgent referrals; 
  • Non-urgent: all other referrals.

 

The original Early Referrals Application (ERA) is an interactive decision support tool designed to support General Practitioners in identifying patients with suspected cancer that should be referred under the 2-week standard outlined by the UK government's Referral Guidelines for Suspected Cancer, published in 2000. The system was developed by Cancer Research UK in 2001.

 

Evaluation

The original ERA system was piloted by the NHS Information Authority. For the pilot, ERA was integrated with the EMIS Practice Management System prior to implementation within two NHS Trusts (Leicester and Southampton). The system was used by around ten GP practices and sixty GPs.

The project involved stakeholders from Cancer Research UK, Department of Health (DoH), National Health Service (NHS), NHS Information Authority (NHSIA), Cancer Action Team (CAT), Leicester Health Authority, Southampton Health Authority, University Hospitals of Leicester, University Hospitals of Southampton, EMIS and InferMed Ltd.

 

Demonstration

Demonstration for cancer referral services

 

References

National Institute for Health andClinical Excellence. Referral guidelines for suspected cancer. June 2005.

J Bury, M Humber, J Fox. Integrating Decision Support with Electronic Referrals. Proceedings of the Tenth World Congress on Health and Medical Informatics (Medinfo2001), London, UK. September 2-5, 2001.

Department of Health. Referral guidelines for suspected cancer. London: DoH, 2000.