Understanding AI's potential at Breast Cancer Now

At Breast Cancer Now, we're on a journey to explore how AI can help us better serve people affected by breast cancer. As a forward-thinking organisation open to change, we recognise that AI is already impacting the people we care about - our supporters, campaigners, and service users, and now we're working to better understand how to embrace it.

We engaged Torchbox to help us raise the bar in terms of understanding AI across our organisation. We needed support to get everyone to a baseline level of understanding and to break down AI into its different elements, as it's obviously not just one thing.

Working together, we developed a systematic programme to explore AI's potential across our organisation. What made the approach unique was the commitment to broad engagement - we brought together 36 team members from across the organisation and 13 people with lived experience of breast cancer through workshops that helped us identify 134 potential opportunities. Torchbox’s experience working with other charities meant they could bring real examples to life and guide us through the process.

People with lived experience were more ambitious about AI's potential than we initially expected. They saw transformative possibilities for improving lives and advancing research and diagnosis. One participant noted 'AI isn't going to cut my hair but it might be able to find cancer where a mammogram couldn't.'

Through our ideation workshops with Torchbox, we got people thinking creatively about the art of the possible. This helped us identify several key areas for immediate implementation using existing commercial tools:

• Idea generation and content creation
• Data summarisation and analysis
• Pattern identification in research
• Meeting transcription and summarisation
• Report writing to organisational standards

We also identified medium-term opportunities that would require more custom solutions:

• Personalising supporter journeys
• Automating aspects of our Ask our Nurse email service
• Creating personalised communications to improve outreach

Based on extensive consultation across the organisation and Torchbox's expertise in working with other charities, we developed a measured approach built on six key pillars:

• Data privacy and security
• Ethical AI use
• Transparency and understanding
• Quality control
• Human-AI collaboration
• Responsible AI management

We're particularly interested in how AI might support our nursing team by making their process of responding to enquiries more efficient while maintaining the essential human expertise our service users value. As one workshop participant noted, “I'd have just loved a simple guide. You know, being able to ask, what should I pack if I'm having a double mastectomy?"

We're excited about AI's potential to support our mission in various ways. The successful implementation of our initial projects will mark just the beginning of our AI journey.

We're now exploring various ways to further integrate AI technologies into our services, always with the goal of enhancing accessibility and support for the breast cancer community.

My advice for other charities exploring AI? Engage with an agency like Torchbox that can help guide you and bring real examples to life.

Focus on outcomes rather than technology, and learn from peers and partners who are already using AI responsibly and ethically. Join charity groups, network with others in the sector, and find out what they're doing.

While the pace of change can feel overwhelming, maintaining a clear focus on your mission and values will help guide implementation decisions.