00:00Tell us about your backstory, because being a junior doctor in the emergency room and, you know, seeing a certain
00:07patient and how that kind of got you to where you are today and why we're having this conversation.
00:12Yeah, absolutely. And thanks so much for having me today.
00:15So cancer is something that I think touches all of us from either experiencing personally as like a family member,
00:21a friend or colleague.
00:22We've all kind of experienced a loss of cancer.
00:24And as a junior doctor and then later when I specialised in primary care, I treated and cared for a
00:30lot of patients who had a cancer diagnosis.
00:33And sadly, more often than not, I saw patients actually die prematurely from a cancer diagnosis.
00:39And it just happened to be a really light bulb moment for me quite early on in my career was
00:43when I was doing a shift in the emergency room.
00:45And I had a patient who had come in where they had seen their own provider over the course of
00:50six months with accelerating symptoms.
00:52And it was one of the things that they kept going back and kept being reassured.
00:56They did have some tests. They were put on some treatment.
00:58But at the same time, their symptoms were getting worse and they ended up in the ER, which is when
01:02I met them.
01:03And it was a really sad story where I spent the night with this one patient and it transpired that
01:08he had pancreatic cancer and it just spread everywhere.
01:11And it was in giving this news to him that I was surprised and taken back from his reaction where
01:18he never really had an issue with the cancer, but kind of threw back to me is that, you know,
01:23as a patient, I had done all the right things.
01:25I'd gone back to get care. I was worried things were getting worse.
01:28I kept going back to see my doctor, but the system failed me.
01:32And it wasn't really the fact that he had cancer, but why was the cancer diagnosed so late?
01:36And what we know when it comes to late cancer diagnosis, it's really the difference between life or death for
01:42many patients where an early stage detection, for example, in bowel cancer, over 90 percent of patients survived 10 years
01:49or more from bowel cancer compared to less than 10 percent who are diagnosed in the very late stages.
01:54So in doing so and kind of seeing this experience really firsthand, it really made me reflect to say, well,
02:00how are patients diagnosed with cancer and what more can we do as both a health system, as doctors and
02:07as a society to move diagnosis upstream so we can capture patients and all patients earlier in their diagnostic journey?
02:14There are so many elements to this. It has to do with coverage, health insurance, technology, support or lack thereof
02:23when it comes to research.
02:25And those are the tensions that I want to talk about. And I'm just curious, given how fast technology is
02:30moving, but also at the same time seeing funding pulled by the federal government here in the United States for
02:35a lot of research, does it leave us in a place that the technology can make up for that lack
02:41of funding?
02:41Are you still optimistic about things moving forward?
02:45So what we're really excited about at See the Science is we're using artificial intelligence and analyzing electronic health record
02:52data to predict if someone is at risk of cancer.
02:55So if you think about how traditionally over the last 20, 30, 50 years we've approached cancer, we've been really
03:02just testing people to try and see how we can find cancer.
03:04And many screening programs, as you'll know, are quite invasive, especially the ones for women when it comes to breast
03:11screening or cervical screening.
03:13And that's the first entry point in where patients generally feel well, but we test them to try and find
03:18the cancer early.
03:20We've never had more of a precise or personalized way to do it.
03:23And what See the Science has been working on, we're really excited about all the success we've had in the
03:27UK's National Health Service, is we've been able to accurately predict when a patient is at risk of cancer purely
03:33through looking at their data that sits in their electronic health record and collecting data directly from patients.
03:39So you can imagine from the idea of having to test people in an evasive way every one, two or
03:46three years, compared to having a software that runs continuously in the background of your electronic health record and can
03:52help flag when you're now at risk of cancer and get you into the right care you need and make
03:57sure you undergo the right tests and investigations.
03:59So we're really excited about the power AI has when it comes to early cancer diagnosis.
04:04And in the UK, we've assessed over 500,000 patients through this method and helped to detect 75,000 patients
04:13with cancer across over 100 different cancer types purely through this approach.
04:18And like for like, you talked about coverage and you talked about health insurance.
04:21You can imagine taking an AI-based approach significantly cheaper than if we had to scan everyone in the population
04:27or test everyone in the population.
04:29So one of the things that we really are excited about is AI to be able to deliver early cancer
04:35detection, but in democratizing access and reaching those patients in those rural geographies, but also really thinking about how we
04:42can bring costs down substantially.
04:44So cancer and cancer care is one of the most expensive cost drivers we have, both for CMS, but also
04:50for commercial payers.
04:51Dr. Bakshi, you just have about two minutes.
04:53I would love to talk so much about this.
04:55Where's the choke point in getting this actually done?
04:59Because I think about there's a whole massive business in treating people with cancer, but if we could get it
05:05earlier detected, it would certainly impact that business.
05:09And I think most would think that that's a good thing because early detection can lead to much, much better
05:13outcomes.
05:14But I'm just curious.
05:15So what's the sticking point here?
05:17I mean, is the data there that this actually is effective work?
05:19Do you catch it earlier for people and this just makes sense or what's holding it back?
05:24Yeah, absolutely.
05:25So we have demonstrated a 36% stage shift from moving it from stage three, stage four to stages one
05:31and two, where it's localized and treatable.
05:33We've also seen a 99% sensitivity for cancer, so capturing all patients with cancer in the population.
05:39But more importantly, when you say around the choke hold, I think up until now, a lot of the investment
05:45has been in late stage treatment.
05:46So we spend about $150 billion on late stage treatment.
05:50So that's a huge cost savings we can have if we can reduce the burden of that and move diagnosis
05:56upstream to early detection.
05:57But the other benefit, and I'll mention this now because I'm speaking to Bloomberg, is purely on thinking about the
06:02working age population.
06:04Cancer is the leading cause of premature death across all age groups.
06:07Those are people being taken out of the workforce, taken out of employment.
06:10These are taxpayers that are taken out.
06:12So there's not only just the benefit to patients, but it's the economic benefit to society and helping patients live
06:18longer with cancer.
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