'Computer algo' blamed for 450k UK women failing to receive breast screening invite

Hey Jeremy (Hunt)

Hows about a screening programme for the cancer that kills more people in the UK than any other now...

Namely, Prostate Cancer.

No? If No then why not? Men are second class citizens when it comes to NHS cancer screening.

recommended reading

"Weapons Of Math Destruction”, Cathy O’Neil. Cheesy title, but interesting read.

Important correction

This isn't pedantic, as it should set a lot of people's minds at rest, but this issue specifically affects women under NHS England. The issue didn't affect the "British" NHS and Hunt is not the "British" Health minister. Shona Robison, the Scottish Health Minister, has issued a statement to reassure Scottish patients that the issue does not affect NHS Scotland's systems.

I realise how this comment could be construed, but please just take it as a correction of some incorrect information.

Web developers seem all too prone to this

The amount of websites that have been incorrectly coded to reject credit \ debit cards prior to the end of the month that the card is valid to is astonishing. Many just seem to check against the month number and totally disregard what day of the month it currently is.

Yep, and about 1730 women between 68 and 71 who had a non-progressive cancer were spared an mastectomy, chemo and RT (which have their own morbidity and mortality, particularly in this age group).

So don't bring out you hankies yet folks. At a guesstimate, probably fractionally less women died as a result of this "faulty algorithm".

And yes, I am a surgeon dealing with breast cancer patients (among other things).

See https://www.healthwatch-uk.org/20-awards/award-lectures/66-2002-prof-michael-baum.html

WTF!?!

"There are a number of linked causes, [including] issues with the systems' IT and how ages are programmed into it," he said.

I'm struggling to work out how that's anything but vaguely technical, "it's really complicated", speak for a massive bit of incompetence by a programmer, irrespective of what sort of time-scales they were working on.

shocking

When they suddenly had a 70% reduction in people having breast screening tests did no one think to question it?

The plan is working then - defund it, watch it break down, people cry "something must be done", hand it to the private sector as the solution.

I wonder if this was a deliberate act rather than a fault. Trim a few of the edge cases, save a bit of money. There seems a bit of doubt about cancer testing for people at the top of the range and beyond, so they could, at a pinch, moralise about that. And where should the bottom edge be? 59? 61? You could console yourself abstractly about that. And money is saved so they can use that to save more lives immediately. I find it entirely plausible that something like that could happen in a huge bureaucracy, especially one under prolonged pressure from above to drive down costs. If only it wasn't for them meddling kids. Perhaps I'm becoming too cynical.

What kind of monster calls their child 'Feremy'?

It's guaranteed to get them a kicking every day of their lives at school, resulting in the kind of twisted psyche capable of "At this stage it is unclear whether any delay in diagnosis would have resulted in any avoidable harm or death"

It never will be clear; Science isn't whatabouttery - you can't say what would have happened if you had done something else, only what did or (at a pinch) will happen after doing what you did/will do.

How is a mind capable of that kind of utterance allowed out on even day release, never mind to run a national/governmental service?