ImpACT Project: Improving Access to Clinical Trials in Victoria, an Artificial Intelligence-Based Approach.

Purpose: Enhancing the speed and efficiency of clinical trial recruitment is a key objective across international health systems. This study aimed to use artificial intelligence (AI) applied in the Victorian Cancer Registry (VCR), a population-based cancer registry, to assess (1) if VCR received all relevant pathology reports for three clinical trials, (2) AI accuracy in auto-extracting information from pathology reports for recruitment, and (3) the number of participants approached for trial enrollment using the AI approach compared with standard hospital-based recruitment.

Methods: To verify pathology report accessibility for VCR trial enrollment, reports from the laboratory were cross-referenced.

The British Geriatrics Society's position on assisted dying.

In response to increased focus on the issue of Assisted Dying (AD) in the UK due to the presentation of The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill 2024-25 [1] and bills before parliaments in the Isle of Man, Guernsey and Scotland, the British Geriatric Society (BGS) recently developed a position statement opposing legalisation of AD in the UK [2]. We set out our key reasoning behind this position, namely the current adverse health and social care context and significant concern about whether effective safeguards can be created to protect older people with complex needs from undue harms. The BGS asks for improved, personalised, multidisciplinary care for older people at the end of their lives, including high-quality palliative and end-of-life care.

High patient acceptance of immediately sequential bilateral cataract surgery (ISBCS) as part of a one-stop see-and-treat pathway within an innovative NHS cataract unit.

Background: Constituting ~0.5% of all NHS cataract operations, national provision of immediately sequential bilateral cataract surgery (ISBCS) is limited. Combining offering ISBCS within a novel one-stop see-and-treat (S&T) cataract pathway would offer patients the opportunity for two cataract operations in a single hospital visit.