Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department have taken to (a) improve patient outcomes and (b) reduce waiting times for patients in Essex living with prostate cancer.

To improve outcomes for patients with prostate cancer, including in Essex, NHS England has introduced a best-practice timed pathway for prostate cancer so that those suspected of prostate cancer receive an MRI scan first, which ensures that only those men most at risk of having cancer undergo an invasive biopsy.

The Government has also invested £16 million towards the Prostate Cancer UK-led TRANSFORM screening trial, which is seeking to find ways to catch prostate cancer in men as early as possible.

The ‘AI in Health and Care Award’ has also been established, which aims to accelerate the testing and development of AI technologies. £113 million has already been allocated to support 86 AI technologies. Three of these projects specifically relate to prostate cancer, one of which is the Paige prostate cancer detection tool, developed by the University of Oxford.

The Department will publish a National Cancer Plan later this year which will include details on how we will improve outcomes for cancer patients across England, reduce waiting times for diagnosis and treatment, and ensure that patients have access to the latest treatments and technology.