Leadership
Community • Political support • National Cancer Plan • Action Team
Clear and evidence-based guidance
Clear cancer plans and strategies
National cancer action team supported by experts in the Department of Health.
High-level political support and a strong media focus on cancer reflect public interest, fear and concerns.
Data
Evidence-based solutions • Transparent data record • Research
Evidence-based guidance, intelligence and research
Improved AI, with cancer registries, linking with other datasets such as screening, diagnostic, treatment and outcomes hospital data.
Data from registries, audits, hospital activities, screening and research all uploaded into one "National Cancer Action Team".
Development of guidance, including Improving outcomes guidance.
Establishment of cancer networks funded with permanent staff bring together payers, clinicians, and patients across organisational boundaries.
Funding
Integrated care systems • Alliances
Adequate funding
Clear cancer budget and spending with agreed targets and outcomes
Accountability: decisions needed where responsibility lies for earlier diagnostics (and thus improved survival)
Separate budgets for high-value drugs and/or very high-value programmes (transplants, proton therapy etc.)
Integrated care systems (cancer alliances and partnerships)
Staff
Workforce expansion
Expansion of the workforce in the early
years of the programme:
Delivery of care by multidisciplinary teams (MDTs).
Cancer nurse specialists training
Training of primary care and regional health workers
Use of remote, digital and telemedicine support
Technology
Medical devices potential to support early diagnosis
Despite significant improvements in cancer technology (e.g. in the UK) the 5-year survival rates have not caught up with other comparable countries. The focus was mostly on secondary and tertiary care.
In the early phases of the National Cancer Program, too little emphasis was placed on improving the rate of early diagnosis.
Thus, our goal to provide a range of solutions aiming for early diagnosis.