Cancer survivor shares number one concern for people using AI for health reasons
Research has revealed that 32% of people used an AI tool in some capacity for health purposes in the last three months, but Miriam Staunton says there is still a lot to be done before we can rely on it
Research has revealed that 32% of people used an AI tool in some capacity for health purposes in the last three months, but Miriam Staunton says there is still a lot to be done before we can rely on itRachel Beresford14:56, 25 Jul 2026With new research revealing that 32% of people used an AI tool in some capacity for health purposes in the last three months, AstraZeneca has launched a campaign, Perspectives Matter: Shaping the Future of Cancer Care Together, as 56% of people also say they expect AI to change or transform healthcare within five years. At a conference at the Royal College of Physicians, hosted by AstraZeneca, last month, Professor Maeve Lowery, Consultant Medical Oncologist at St James’s Hospital, said, “It’s clear that people in Ireland are open to using AI to improve cancer services, in particular to help gather key information quickly and to reduce waiting times for procedures and appointments. ”But according to cancer patient and co-founder of United Cancer Advocates Network, Miriam Staunton, who was diagnosed with stage 3 melanoma in 2018, there is still a lot to be done before we can rely on AI as a real tool for change in cancer care. Miriam toldChic, “I was diagnosed in 2018. I found a lump under my arm and got that investigated. It was biopsied and found to be melanoma but they never found the primary source. So I didn’t have a lesion on my skin which is normally how you find melanoma; an abnormal mole or something on your skin. “I had no primary source so that meant when my cancer was discovered it was already stage 3, it was quite advanced. “So at that time I had surgery and radiation but there was no chemo or immunotherapy available for me at that stage in Ireland. Now, I later found out that had I been living in France or Germany or Italy, I would have been treated but it wasn’t available here. “So basically what happened me was they said ‘we’ll just keep you on surveillance’ but the chance of my cancer returning was pretty high, like 70 per cent plus, so a year later then I progressed to stage 4. I had a lesion on my liver and then I was able to access the treatment. So I had to wait to get sicker!“So that’s what started my advocacy journey in a way. After I had that treatment, since 2020 I’ve had no sign of active disease, as a result of the treatment. “Then I discovered that we are very late at getting access to treatments in this country and that’s what really started me down my whole route of my becoming a patient advocate – that was the beginnings of it. ”During last month’s conference, Miriam pointed out that there is a four-month waitlist in this country for urgent colonoscopies, which is the first line of defence for detecting pre-cancerous growths in the bowel as well as diagnosing colorectal cancers. And Miriam toldChicthat while AI offers opportunities in speeding up triage, we still have a lot of other building blocks to put in place first. “There’s lots we need to be doing first,” Miriam said. “What I would say about AI is it’s definitely coming at us and it does offer opportunities, there’s no question, but, and this is the big but, there’s lots of the basics missing. “Bowel screening is one – potentially AI could help there in terms of maybe speeding up triage or those kind of items but essentially we need to do something different around colonoscopies. “Right now all of our colonoscopies are consultant led and that’s a real blockage point. In lots of other countries they have nurse-led programmes and clinical nurse specialists that specialise in colonoscopy and do that all the time to ensure that we meet the requirement – that we haven’t got people waiting for urgent colonoscopies. “Because essentially that just means in some of those people cancer is developing and we’re just not catching it early and that just doesn’t make sense from a moral or a cost standpoint so it’s a total no-brainer. “So in terms of resourcing around radiation equipment, around diagnostics like scanning and colonscopy, that all needs to be improved before we’re ready to take advantage. ”Crucially, though, Miriam says it’s how we record medical histories in this country that needs to be tackled first before we can really embrace the benefits of AI in cancer care. “Crucially, what we need is a basic digital health record; like the HSE still runs on paper records so to be talking about AI when we don’t even have – as a patient you don’t have digital access to your health information. “Everything else you get on your phone – you go and you look up your banking app, you can see what’s in your account; you go and you look at your bus timetable and know when the next bus is coming. “You cannot access basic information about yourself – what was my test results; what was my bloods; when’s my next appointment; what’s my diagnosis, you know, basic stuff, you don’t have that. That’s all just given to you verbally and you’re expected to remember it and, you know, write it down somewhere. “Everything is based on paper. “AI is based on data that’s fed into it but we don’t have the basic building blocks but that’s an absolute must-do and I think to be talking about AI when we don’t have a digital health record is bananas. We’re running before we’re walking. ”When asked in a recent survey if they would use AI tools to look up health symptoms if, hypothetically, the health topic in question was cancer, two in five people said they would. And Miriam agrees with a sentiment shared with Prof. Lowery at the conference that cancer patients now want to know more about their health status and to feel empowered to understand their diagnosis. “Understandably, the general public are using AI,” Miriam says. “And I think what Professor Maeve Lowery said, which I think is important to note, is that she welcomes an empowered patient. “And certainly when I’ve done surveys of cancer patients, there’s a feeling that they want to understand the disease so it’s really about educating and empowering people. ”“(But) what I took away from (the conference) is the really salient point that, say you get a set of test results and you don’t know what they mean so you put it into Chat GPT or whatever to say, ‘explain to me what this means’, you’re putting your personal information into a system that is uncontrolled – do people know what they’re giving the system there and I don’t think people do. “That would be my number 1 concern. Where is that information going?“I think I would say, though, AI is better than Google in that it’s giving you a slightly more nuanced view. I think that was the issue with Google – you put in ‘what is the life expectancy for stage 4 melanoma?’, for example, and Google will just return whatever it finds and a lot of the information is old and out-of-date whereas AI is a little bit smarter and it will go and look and say, ‘well the last five years looked like this’ and ‘it’s been proved in the last 10 years this. . . ’. “But it’s just about making sure you’re not being fooled and getting misinformation from AI which is a concern. ”Article continues belowAstraZeneca Ireland last month launched the Perspectives Matter: Shaping the Future of Cancer Care Together campaign, a new initiative intended to bring people together, ask big questions, and help shape how cancer care needs to evolve. As a first initiative, AstraZeneca commissioned Ipsos B&A to conduct a nationally representative survey of over 1,000 adults to understand how the Irish public views AI's role in healthcare and cancer care. To view the full report, see perspectivesmatter. ieWant tosee more of the stories you love from RSVP? To add RSVP as a preferred source of news on Google,simply click here