Media Monitoring: 21 – 27 November

Companies who receive scientific advice from our NICE Advice service may experience a faster path to guidance publication, a study has found.
According to the study, technologies that received scientific advice took a median of 312 days to progress from marketing authorisation to NICE guidance publication.
In contrast, those without such advice required a median of 400 days – a difference of nearly 3 months.

People in the UK who are diagnosed with the two most lethal forms of cancer die sooner than those in many other comparable countries, a new study has found.
Research by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) showed the UK ranked a lowly 31st out of 43 countries for how many people survive at least five years after being diagnosed with lung cancer.
The UK was below the EU and OECD average, as well as the survival rates in the US, Germany and France. It ranked 26th for five-year survival from colon cancer, below South Korea, Belgium and New Zealand.

The NHS is set to revolutionise access to cancer screening for women in a major drive to boost uptake and save thousands of lives, the head of the NHS has announced.
From next month, the NHS will begin to roll out a new “ping and book” service, alerting the phones of women to remind them they are due or overdue an appointment, with new functionality being developed to enable millions to book screening through the NHS App next year.
The head of the health service, Amanda Pritchard, set out reforms that will fully digitise screening delivery and help save the NHS over £130m over the next five years, while helping improve uptake by making it easier for women to take up the offer of screening.

The most commonly diagnosed STIs in 2023 were chlamydia (49% of all new STI diagnoses), gonorrhoea (21%), first episode genital herpes (7%) and first episode genital warts (7%).
Over the last 10 years, there has been a decrease in the number of new diagnoses of many STIs, but gonorrhoea and syphilis have increased.
The number of gonorrhoea diagnoses in 2023 was the highest since records began in 1918, while the number of syphilis diagnoses was the highest reported since 1948. There is also concern that gonorrhoea has developed resistance to certain antibiotics, limiting the treatment options available.

Welsh stars are getting behind a global campaign to highlight the threat of antibiotic resistance.
Former Wales international rugby referee, Nigel Owens, and Miss Wales, Millie-Mae Adams, are both speaking out about one of the world’s biggest killers. One person dies every six seconds due to infections associated with antibiotic resistance.
Nigel Owens, who farms in South Wales, said that antibiotics are becoming less effective because we are overusing them and, in some cases, not using them properly.

The projects are led by consortia of universities, civic bodies, businesses and local authorities and are supported by a £22 million investment from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
Projects include a Belfast-based project aimed at accelerating digital healthcare technology to market to reduce the pressures of an ageing population