Cohort 4

Stephen Ali

  • Clinical Lecturer and Honorary Specialty Registrar
  • Swansea University and Swansea Bay University Health Board
  • 2023

In my 12 months as a Topol Digital Fellow I will explore how artificial intelligence can potentially improve patient diagnoses, communication, time to treatment and outcomes in skin cancer care.

My Topol fellowship problem / project:

Skin cancer is a major health problem in society, particularly in Wales where melanoma rates are among the highest in the UK and have risen dramatically in recent years. With an aging population, longer life expectancies, and greater exposure to the sun due to beach culture, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the NHS to provide effective care.

Multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) are important in cancer care, but there are still variations in treatment uptake and effectiveness between different teams. This has resulted in significant direct and indirect costs to the NHS.

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to analyse big data and develop a new clinical decision support tool has the potential to improve patient outcomes and reduce healthcare costs. The goal of this project is to build an AI-mediated platform that can transform MDT working and benefit patients.

Steve has a specific research interest in big data and its use within plastic surgery. His research aims to develop a health informatics infrastructure that promotes monitoring disease patterns and patient outcomes enabling targeted prevention strategies, improved patient safety and improved service delivery within plastic surgery.

He is currently completing his PhD in the ReconRegen Centre, Swansea University as Welsh Clinical Academic Track (WCAT) Fellow and is an Honorary Specialty Registrar at the Welsh Centre for Burns & Plastic Surgery.