Never before has the word unprecedented been so used or so apt, and 2020 has truly been an unprecedented year. In January 2020 at Check4Cancer we were looking forward to the start of a new decade and bringing our cancer screening and diagnostics services to more patients. But like everyone, March brought these plans to a sudden halt and forced us all to rapidly rethink our ways of working.
The NHS was forced to put many non-urgent services on hold to deal with the pandemic, resulting in thousands of cancer patients going undiagnosed and untreated. We know that the earlier cancer is diagnosed and treated the better so this pause was a serious concern for all of us at Check4Cancer. Our Chief Medical Officer, Professor Gordon Wishart, was especially concerned that measures should be implemented as soon as possible to bring back these services in a COVID-secure manner to help treat these patients and clear the backlog. He has been working closely with a number of leading medical professionals to campaign the Government for the necessary planning and infrastructure to make this possible.
Check4Cancer was able to keep most of our services open throughout the pandemic, working closely with our partner clinics to put the necessary safety measures in place. Our at-home testing kits for bowel, cervical, lung and prostate cancer screening don’t require an in-person appointment so were available throughout and our appointments continued to provide essential screening and diagnostics services for breast, prostate and skin cancers.
Not only have we maintained our services, but we have also developed a new brand and website to facilitate user interaction and help more patients access our services. Through this new website and the continuing hard work of our team we’ve been able to help over 13,000 patients this year, of which nearly 8,000 used our diagnostics services and 4,500 had cancer screening.
As 2020 draws to a close, we’re looking forward to a restful, if different, festive season and with positive news of vaccines, a healthy and happy new year! Most of all we’d like to thank all of our team, partner clinics and supporters for their hard work over the course of this challenging year – we couldn’t have done it without you!
