ideasIdea
A single 'cancer check at 60' appointment bundling all screening tests
People are invited separately for bowel, breast, cervical and lung screening and many miss some. One appointment offering all eligible tests, plus a risk assessment, would raise uptake.
Fragmented invitations lead to partial participation. Propose a bundled visit (like the NHS Health Check) at 50 and 60 offering a FIT kit, mammogram or HPV self-sample booking, lung risk assessment, family history capture, and where applicable germline or polygenic testing, with navigation support.
Hypothesis
A bundled appointment increases the proportion of people fully up to date on all eligible screening by at least 15 percentage points.
Rationale
One decision beats four; patient navigation is proven to raise uptake.
What would test it
RCT of bundled invitation versus standard separate invitations in 20,000 people.
Maturity
speculative
Who has to act
policy
Cost to try
Medium ($1M to $50M)
Years to first evidence
3
Bottlenecks it attacks
- Most lethal cancers are found late · Screening exists for only a few cancers. Pancreatic, ovarian, liver, oesophageal and most lung cancers are found when cure is unlikely.
- Prevention we already have is not deployed · Around four in ten cancers are preventable with tools we already own: vaccines, tobacco control, weight, alcohol, sun and infection control.
- Fragmented care and guideline gaps · Patients fall between specialists, wait for referrals and often do not get the treatment guidelines say they should.