IMPROVE UK results announced at BGCS Conference 2023
Today the results of the first pilots in the IMPROVE UK programme have been presented at the British Gynaecological Cancer Society annual conference in Aberdeen, Scotland.
Key takeaways:
- Setting up a prehabilitation clinic for ovarian cancer patients is feasible, acceptable with patients, cost effective for the NHS, and improves patients health before they begin cancer treatment. This means more women will have access to treatment.
- A “One Stop Shop” to reduce the number of patient appointments into one day is acceptable to patients. This reduces the time from diagnosis to treatment.
- Regional multi-centre MDT (Multi Disciplinary Team) discussions can increase the proportion of patients receiving surgery. This means better communication around treatments and surgery options.
- When patients do not have English as their first language, information on genetic testing can be delivered using innovative methods to ensure testing is more likely to be accepted. We have a suite of videos translated to easily communicate important details on genetic testing.
IMPROVE UK is an innovative programme launched by Ovarian Cancer Action. It aims to significantly reduce the inequalities that ovarian cancer patients currently face in healthcare and the disproportionately low survival rates.
The IMPROVE UK programme is the first of its kind and is designed to significantly improve survival rates by ensuring that no matter where a woman lives in the UK, or her ethnicity, she can get the ovarian cancer diagnosis, treatment and care she needs.
In January 2022, seven pilot projects were awarded funding through the programme targeted a wide range of issues in the current system, in a bid to improve the access to high quality care for more women. 18 months later we now have the results of these innovative pilots. Presenting the results at the annual BGCS conference is the first step to share the learnings with other cancer centres across the UK to help drive wider changes and improved health services for women.
“Women have been living with the inequality gap in care and treatment for too long and now is the time for action and change. Our IMPROVE UK pilots have been a huge success, with a phenomenal amount achieved over just 18 months. The determination of the teams involved has been inspiring and now we need to ensure that the learnings are spread across the whole of the UK.”
The impact of IMPROVE UK