Clinical trials

Hearing loss affects approximately 11 million people in the UK, while tinnitus impacts around 7 million. Both conditions can significantly reduce quality of life and are linked to poorer mental health and employment challenges. Each year, tinnitus alone accounts for more than one million GP appointments, and patients referred to hospital ear, nose and throat (ENT) services often face long delays, sometimes exceeding a year, before their first assessment. To address this demand, the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust has developed a virtual ENT clinic. Patients undergo a validated hearing test in person and complete online questionnaires. Clinicians then review these data to determine next steps, which may include discharge with advice, referral for imaging, or a face-to-face consultation. Initial trials demonstrated that the majority of patients could be managed virtually, substantially reducing waiting times. However, clinicians must still review every case, limiting capacity for patients who require direct care. This project builds on the virtual clinic by introducing artificial intelligence (AI) to support the assessment process. Using explainable AI methods, the system will be trained to replicate clinician-level decision-making while providing transparent reasoning for its recommendations. The study will evaluate how closely AI-generated outcomes align with clinician assessments, with all cases continuing to receive a clinician's final review. Clinicians will not be aware of the recommendations produced by the AI tool, but the study aims to measure how concordant AI recommendations are with clinician assessments. If the AI tool's clinical recommendations closely align with clinician recommendations (the gold standard for care), the AI tool could be introduced as a clinical recommendation assistant tool, streamlining the triage and management of hearing loss and tinnitus, enabling clinicians to focus on complex cases, accelerating access to care, and improving efficiency.

The 1939 Cancer Act in the UK (England \& Wales) prohibits advertising of cancer treatments to the public, by anyone but the NHS. The rise of the internet and social media presents new challenges to its enforcement and raises questions about unintended consequences for patients being treated for cancer. Through anonymous surveys, this study aims to understand how patients, healthcare professionals and industry professionals perceive technological changes and their implications for online and social media cancer care information, as well as highlight opportunities for safe and ethical modernisation.

The goal of this clinical trial is to understand the impact of compassionate expressive writing in people living with and beyond cancer. The main question it aims to answer is: Does compassionate expressive writing have any impact on well-being outcomes in people living with and beyond cancer, such as body compassion, self-compassion, quality of life and psychological well-being outcomes ? Researchers will compare compassionate expressive writing with a standard expressive writing task (with no compassionate prompt) to see if there is a difference in self-reported body compassion, self-compassion, quality of life and psychological well-being outcomes between the two conditions. Participants will : Complete a series of pre-intervention questionnaires. Be assigned to one of the two writing conditions. Attend four expressive writing sessions and write freely for approximately 20 minutes in response to a topic related to their cancer experience. Complete a series of post-intervention questionnaires. Repeat the questionnaires at 1-month follow-up.

To perform a post-market study of the performance of the Idylla™ ThyroidPrint® Assay using clinical samples in predicting the nature of indeterminate thyroid nodules (ITNs) across multiple centers.

To identify opportunities for antibiotic prescribing shared decision making between patients and prescribers in secondary care.