Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 3:04 pm on 14 December 2022.
Thanks very much, Altaf. I think I've responded to a letter from you on this, so I'm surprised that you haven't received that yet, so I'll chase that up immediately after this. But I think what was important for some of the things that came out of that cancer summit meeting was the need to make sure we do a lot more straight to test, so you cut out some of the waiting time, because, obviously, the sooner you catch cancer, the less complicated it is and much easier it is to treat. So, there are some health boards that are in a really different place to others. One health board, for example, does about 37 per cent straight to test, and another does about 79 per cent. Highlighting those kinds of things in a summit meeting, making sure that everybody tries to work to best practice and that we're benchmarking is really important, I think. I think there's also an unacceptable variation in terms of tumour sites. As we've heard today, gynaecology is an area that needs a lot more attention, and there are other areas where, actually, we're doing much better, so why are we seeing that variation? So, those are some of the questions that we've asked them to focus on.
Also, I think we've got a lot more to do in terms of making sure that we use digital technology as much as we can, but also that we think about what the future might look like. There are real developments now in terms of cancer in relation to, for example, liquid biopsy tests, and we need to make sure that we're on the right page and ready for those when that development really is mature enough for us to use.