Health Service to Explore AI for Breast Cancer Screening

The Health Service Executive is exploring artificial intelligence for BreastCheck to address increasing patient volumes and radiographer shortages that have caused the free national screening programme to miss its operational targets for the third consecutive year. The initiative aims to support mammographic interpretation and ease reader fatigue across the service.

Operational Pressures Facing BreastCheck

Modern breast screening operations encounter significant hurdles due to expanding patient numbers and a scarcity of qualified staff. According to an eTender notice published by the Health Service Executive, these workforce shortages create difficulties in maintaining rapid turnaround times while preserving high diagnostic accuracy.

The complexity involved in interpreting mammograms, coupled with the necessity for uniform performance across vast populations, strains the existing infrastructure. All modern breast screening programmes face increasing operational pressures including rising patient volumes, radiologist workforce shortages, and growing demands for faster turnaround times while maintaining diagnostic accuracy, the eTender notice states.

Furthermore, the notice highlights that reader fatigue and workload pressures can impact diagnostic consistency, particularly during extended screening sessions. The programme also manages mounting pressure to improve early detection rates while minimising false positives and unnecessary recalls, according to the tender documentation.

National Screening Service Evaluates AI for BreastCheck

To tackle these diagnostic and operational challenges, the National Screening Service is conducting a premarket consultation to evaluate available technologies against specific clinical, technical, and regulatory requirements before making any procurement choices. The Health Service Executive stated that BreastCheck was selected as the first programme to explore artificial intelligence because it possesses the most mature evidence base for immediate implementation.

International research from Sweden indicates that artificial intelligence-supported breast screening successfully detected 20 per cent more breast cancers while potentially cutting radiologist workload in half, as noted by The Irish Times. Speaking at a Royal College of Physicians in Ireland conference, Damian McCallion, chief technology officer at the Health Service Executive, acknowledged that Ireland remains a laggard in digital health within Europe but emphasized that substantial digitization work is underway.

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The key thing there is patient confidence. It will not be perfect. But it will improve accuracy. If we bring patients along with that, that will make a huge difference. That will bring confidence in play,
Damian McCallion, Chief Technology Officer at the Health Service Executive