A Nottinghamshire GP has won a national award from the Royal College of GPs for his ‘ground-breaking’ work in speeding up cancer diagnoses.
Dr Ben Noble, who lives in Attenborough and is one of Cancer Research UK’s 16 GP Leads across the country, has been awarded the RCGP’s Bright Ideas award for his innovative ‘Cancer Maps’ – an online tool developed in collaboration with his dad, Patrick Noble.
The RCGP’s Bright Ideas Awards were established to inspire, celebrate and recognise fresh thinking and ground-breaking ideas in primary care
Dr Noble won the Pioneer Award category for his brainchild, the ‘Cancer Maps’, an interactive online tool based on NICE Guidelines, designed to be used during consultations to help clinicians recognise cancer symptoms. The maps were piloted with GP surgeries across Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire.
Calling on his recently retired dad for computer expertise, Dr Noble created the maps after realising that his life-long habit of ‘mind-mapping’ to make sense of complex information could be of direct use to doctors in the surgery.
Designed to be used during consultations in cases of suspected cancer, the Cancer Maps allow doctors to input patient data and symptoms, causing different areas of the map to light up, highlighting potential routes for action in line with NICE Guidelines. Results can be clearly seen by both doctor and patient alike, reassuring patients that the right steps are being taken.
After a successful pilot test with Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire GPs, the Cancer Maps were endorsed by the RCGP and made available to doctors nationwide through Gateway C**, an online cancer training platform for primary care.
Dr Noble said: I’m delighted to have won this award, it really does affirm my confidence that the Cancer Maps have an important part to play in early cancer diagnosis. That the judges recognised this innovation is a source of great pride to me.
He is currently working on developing a patient version of the Cancer Maps.