Wielding technology and innovation in the fight to eliminate deaths by cancer

Wielding technology and innovation in the fight to eliminate deaths by cancer GB-49188 Date of preparation: October 2023

C OV E R STO RY

Wielding technology and innovation in the fight to eliminate deaths by cancer Paid for and developed by AstraZeneca UK.

Lucy George, Head of Business Innovation, Oncology at AstraZeneca UK discusses the company’s digital transformation, patient-driven innovation and latest medical technology underpinning its bold ambition to eliminate cancer as a cause of death.

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GB-49188 Date of preparation: October 2023

or more than 40 years, AstraZeneca has been developing cancer medicines in the UK and around the world. Despite the progress in recent decades and the constant drive in R&D to push boundaries in how we understand and fight cancer, there is still more to do.

AstraZeneca is at the heart of oncology R&D in the UK. It is committed to advancing the science of oncology with the aim of delivering life-changing medicines.

The ultimate ambition? To eliminate cancer as a cause of death through scientific discovery, collaborations and digital transformation to ensure that these life-changing medicines reach people most in need.

Here to tell us about the fight to make it achievable is Lucy George, Head of Business Innovation, Oncology at AstraZeneca UK. Lucy begins by explaining how she and her team strive to innovate in terms of precision medicines and science, but also collaborate and forge partnerships with technology companies and the wider healthcare system to enable earlier diagnosis and screening to facilitate earlier identification of cancers – while also

optimising cancer care more broadly.

They are likewise involved with how AstraZeneca UK deploys digital marketing, data and analytics to gather and then wield insights from its customers and patients.

According to Lucy, digital transformation within the healthcare system is crucial to these endeavours.

“It's no secret that the health system is under pressure,” says Lucy. “For instance, in the UK there is a range of different challenges that have all come together such as the postBrexit environment, fallout from COVID-19 and workforce challenges that have now become a real issue in terms of backlogs – in particular for cancer care where people should be diagnosed and treated as quickly and effectively as possible.

“Patients expect and deserve to be treated quickly and, clearly, the NHS requires that as well” Lucy George, Head of Business Innovation, Oncology GB-49188 Date of preparation: October 2023

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organisations with funding provided by AstraZeneca.

“The PATHFINDER initiative was born from the need to be able to look at the whole oncology pathway, particularly in lung cancer for this project,” explains Lucy. “Lung cancer is where there was and is the greatest need for innovation of this kind and remains the most common cause of cancer death in the UK, accounting for one in five of all cancer deaths.

“I think that there's now an opportunity in the healthcare industry to be able to work together to resolve some of those issues in a way that creates a win-win for all of us. We have the ambition to bring innovation to patients when and where they need it. Patients expect and deserve to be treated quickly and, clearly, the NHS requires that as well. We see partnerships as a way for us to engage at this level and deliver value, demonstrating how we can help to resolve and relieve some of the issues facing the healthcare system today.”

Lucy states this is a particularly pressing concern in the UK. “Unfortunately, the UK also has one of the worst five-year survival rates for lung cancer in Europe. This is one of the underpinning reasons why digital innovation is of paramount importance in the UK.” One of the specific areas where AstraZeneca UK champions collaboration to drive innovation is its PATHFINDER initiative. PATHFINDER is a collaborative project between AstraZeneca, the NHS, and other 4

“For that reason, the PATHFINDER project was put together to focus on optimising care in lung cancer by working with local cancer services to identify the pinch points in their pathways and find data-driven decision points where they could look to make improvements or deploy a technology to assist optimisation. The ultimate goal is to help these local services align lung cancer pathways with some of the national objectives around shortening the time to treatment or the time to diagnosis for cancer.

“PATHFINDER has been in progress for over a year now and it has enabled us to identify some pilot projects that have led to new partnerships. As a pharmaceutical company, these pilot projects have helped us identify how we can best co-create some of these solutions. Moreover, now PATHFINDER is a national project, we're looking at how we scale the projects in lung cancer, but potentially in future also use the same methodology to partner in other areas of cancer care as well.”

This programme is currently being integrated into other NHS lung cancer

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initiatives alongside innovative artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning algorithms.

“We've got two fantastic digital projects that are centred around the use of AI. The first is based in Greater Manchester where we are collaborating with Qure.ai. Here, we’re using a machine learning algorithm that works alongside chest X-rays to triage the number of abnormalities or the number of findings that can be considered at an early stage, even before a radiologist looks at them, to highlight which scans need to be looked at as a priority. What that means is healthcare professionals should be able to potentially see patients who've got lung cancer at an earlier stage.

“Considering the UK’s workforce capacity issues, this project can really make the process more efficient and apply the radiologist's time to the patients with the most urgent and high-priority needs. It launched this year and is a work in progress at the

“Our stakeholders and partners say that what we're able to bring to collaboration is expertise. We have industry-leading digital technology and digital project management experts in the business” moment. We'll be looking at this over the next few months to analyse the outcomes, but the hope is that it allows us to prove that this is an effective way to create efficiencies in the system and release capacity but more importantly, get patients diagnosed as early as possible.

“The second initiative is a partnership with Clinithink, funded

by AstraZeneca, which again uses AI in the forms of machine learning and natural language processing.

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to explore ideas that NHS stakeholders wouldn't necessarily grow on their own because they're busy seeing their patients, and we're able to give those projects the time and space they need to come to fruition.

Here we’re looking at patients early on the disease process, before they get referred to specialists. The project is asking if we can predict which patients could be at higher risk of lung cancer through using information in medical records, and then bringing them in for screening. If successful, we would run it as a potential pilot to scale further and use it as another example of how we can partner to use technology across the board to identify cancer earlier in the treatment pathway.”

When it comes to partnerships between public and private sector entities, like the NHS and AstraZeneca UK, Lucy reiterates there are several opportunities emerging from their collaboration and challenges that can be overcome together.

“Our stakeholders and partners say that what we're able to bring to collaboration is expertise. We have industry-leading digital technology and digital project management experts in the business, but we also have the time and capacity to be able to bring those skills to the table to cocreate comprehensive solutions that really work for each party. We're able 6

“By working with partners, we can support them to explore their use case and give the evidence that is needed to show that their technologies work and they can be scaled – either with our involvement or without our involvement, in a sustainable way. We're not creating things and then walking away. Instead, we're creating projects and pilots that we genuinely think can be used over a wide base for a long time.

“At AstraZeneca, we're quite lucky in that we do have a really clear framework for collaboration with public sector bodies as a private sector company,” Lucy elaborates. “We have an industry body in the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) that sets out what we can do and how we can do it. That allows us to have a very transparent approach to how we partner with public bodies. But this accountability also allows us to foster advanced, purpose-led partnerships, which are more future-focused versus what was perhaps traditionally seen as a more transactional relationship between industry and the NHS. “We're able to foster something that's much more strategic and allows us to work together to tackle some of the bigger picture problems in the healthcare industry.

“There are some brilliant innovations happening in the health system and

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there is a huge opportunity to do more, scale our efforts and take these pockets of excellence and make them prevalent at the national and global levels,” concludes Lucy.

For more information about AstraZeneca UK visit www.astrazeneca.co.uk.

ADDED VALUE Enthusiastic digital convert Lucy began her professional career in marketing and over several years has relished the steps she’s taken towards her role at the leading edge of digital technology today.

“It’s been a journey of realisation and it’s my sincere belief that we have to understand and embrace digital innovation to be successful.”

For Lucy, this means staying at the forefront of the conversations around digital technology, but balancing this with keeping her finger on the pulse with the relevant healthcare and scientific developments that are so crucial to her work.

“I'm a scientist and biologist at the core of things, so working in cancer care is such a purpose-driven and rewarding field to be in. I'm always reading, watching and listening to the latest discussions and I enjoy the opportunities to attend as many industry events as I can.”

Balance Lucy insists that it is equally important to step back as a leader and a professional more broadly.

“Just being able to take the space to decompress and think through all the different things before me enables some of my most innovative ideas. Most of these come to me not when I'm sitting in a boardroom, at my desk or in a team meeting – but actually when I'm out for a run or taking some downtime outside work. Suddenly something, somewhere, locks into place in my mind, and I think that's where the magic really happens in terms of innovation.

“You could work every hour and still not be finished. There's always going to be more to do, so we need to look after ourselves along the journey.”

Connect with Lucy

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www.astrazeneca.co.uk

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GB-49188 Date of preparation: October 2023