Bowel Cancer and Collective Intelligence Workshop
Our Programme Manager, Paul Affleck, reports back from a recent Nesta/Humanly event in London.
Nesta, the UK’s innovation foundation and the award-winning design studio Humanly are undertaking a research project to explore the potential of using collective intelligence design and data to improve colorectal cancer outcomes. At a recent workshop they reported their progress. This included a detailed map of the routes to a bowel cancer diagnosis. The map drew upon National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service (NCRAS) expertise, a literature review and interviews with people with experience of bowel cancer screening and diagnostic testing. It showed how varied a person’s journey to a bowel cancer diagnosis can be, and identified areas where that journey can be delayed.
It was interesting to hear an explanation of ‘collective intelligence’ and the many different ways people can work and act together, especially via new technologies. Previously I have tended to think of ‘intelligence’ as the individual capacity to reason; perhaps encapsulated by Rodin’s famous sculpture 'The Thinker'. We were given a range of examples of the application of collective intelligence from the Oxford English Dictionary to the open source artificial pancreas project. A particularly intriguing example was the Sea Hero Quest game, which has provided spatial navigation data for dementia research.
The workshop gathered together a wide range of attendees. It included those living with bowel cancer, clinicians, data scientists, NCRAS representatives and cancer charities. We were set a range of group tasks exploring how we can enable earlier diagnosis of bowel cancer and increase survival rates. In conclusion, it was a very enjoyable workshop that brought together a wealth of experience and knowledge. It will be fascinating to see how the research project progresses and what difference a collective intelligence approach makes.
Image credit: Rodin's The Thinker, AndrewHorne [Public domain].
