Regional variations in robotic prostatectomy adoption in the UK 2014 to 2017

One of the interesting things when looking at the adoption rates in a country such as the United Kingdom is trying to break it down and see what is happening at a more regional level.

My underlying hunch would be that you are more likely to see the fastest and greatest adoption in the London area and that the adoption rate would be much slower as you moved further away from the center. This hypothesis turns out to be wrong as the graph below shows.

I would like to make the caveat that this is my interpretation of the BAUS data and there could easily be some data error in the way I have captured the numbers. Equally my allocation of hospitals and surgeons to regions may not be 100% accurate. That said I do believe that the overall trends are probably pretty accurate.


As we have seen the overall average grew from 57% to 86% of procedures carried out. London which was 2nd with 85% adoption in 2014 dropped to 3rd with 97% in 2017 having been beaten by the North east and the North west.

Scotland and Wales started with the lowest adoption though both grew significantly during the period.

Propping up the bottom of the table in 2017 was the West Midland region with only 55% adoption rate. This is in part driven by the fact that this is the location of one of the top ten volume surgeons who is still doing all his procedures open. 

It is also interesting to note that the South East regions which is closest to London was lagging behind the national average for most of the period. In pure volume terms London and the South East accounted for 36% of the all prostatectomy's while the North east and North west account for 13%.

For those of you who cannot make out the colors the table below give the percentages from which the graphs are derived ranked in order of 2017 adoption.

I think it is really good that this data is available for all to see in the UK even though it does take a little bit of deciphering.


John Tugwell

CREATOR "OneMinuteHistoryLessons" TRAINER to Consultants. CONTRIBUTOR LinkedIn Drones/Robotics. Business/QMS/ISO Coach/Mentor. Value Chain Creation. Aerospace/NASA/ESA Medical-Semiconductor Robotics Engineer

5y

Interesting Chris. What is your conclusion about the data?

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