An electronic brachytherapy system for early-stage breast cancer, and an in vitro diagnostic molecular assay system for colon cancer staging are the subjects of two newly-published Medtech Innovation Briefings from the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE).
The documents are commissioned by NHS England and produced in support of the NHS Five Year Forward View as one of a number of steps to accelerate innovation in new treatments and diagnostics.
It is hoped this impartial information about innovative devices and diagnostics will help NHS and social care professionals and buyers and commissioners of services with their local decision-making.
The briefings include a review of relevant published evidence and the likely costs of using the technology, but they are not NICE guidance and do not make any recommendations on the value of using the technologies. Whether or not to use the products described is entirely the choice of local staff. However, they will help avoid the need for organisations to produce similar information, so saving staff time, effort and resources.
The latest Medtech Innovation Briefings to be published are:
- The Axxent electronic brachytherapy system for early stage breast cancer from Xoft: The Axxent eBx system is a mobile platform for treating early stage breast cancer. It can also be used to treat non-melanoma skin cancer and gynaecological cancers. It uses an isotope-free miniaturised 50 kV X-ray source that mimics the characteristics of the most-common high-dose rate brachytherapy isotope iridium-192 in order to deliver single-dose intraoperative radiotherapy
- OSNA for colon cancer staging from Sysmex Corporation OSNA (one step nucleic acid amplification) is an automated molecular assay system designed to detect metastatic colon cancer cells in the lymph nodes. The system consists of the RD 100i automated real time nucleic acid analyser unit and the Lynoamp HTS reagent kit, containing all the reagents needed for preparing samples and carrying out the analysis.
