The theme of this year’s World Cancer Day is ‘united by unique’. This movement is a step in the right direction towards championing people-centred cancer care, and RDi are passionate about being part of thisself- cause.
On average, someone is diagnosed with cancer at least every 90 seconds in the UK. In 2024, the number of urgent cancer referrals a month also hit a new record high increasing by 33%, a whopping 12,554 patients were seen per working day!
Between 2017 to 2019 in the UK, there were an average of 44,063 new cases of bowel cancer diagnosed. Across the same timeframe, 3,256 new cases of cervical cancer were diagnosed on average in the UK.
World Cancer Day, an initiative of the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), will take place on the 4th of February. The UICC is the oldest and largest international cancer organisation looking to act on cancer.
They birthed World Cancer Day to raise awareness and encourage proactive steps towards the prevention and treatment of cancer, taking on the global immobilisation of the cancer pandemic. This year’s campaign ‘United by Unique’ looks to ensure that people are placed at the centre of care and their stories at the heart of the conversation.
“Every experience with cancer is unique and it will take all of us, united, to create a world where we look beyond the disease and see the person before the patient’’
To refocus who is the most important factor when it comes to cancer diagnosis, treatment and recovery, it is important to consider a their newly coined phrase ‘people-centred’ healthcare approaches.
Patient-centric diagnosis pathways
It is essential that people are placed at the centre of the healthcare system. Tailoring healthcare services to the individual’s needs will result in the care that they receive being more effective, leading to better outcomes, a sense of empowerment, trust and open communication. Often, higher patient satisfaction reflects better outcomes for patient’s health.
Patient-centric pathways are one part of the bigger picture ultimately working towards patient health, wellbeing and quality of life across both the public and private sectors.
To ensure patient centricity across all aspects of healthcare, there has been a significant rise in at-home sample collection.
Many new screening programmes and healthcare processes have benefitted from remote sample collection pathway, as this effective solution ensures every participant’s needs are considered.
Whether it be anxiety around clinical settings, busy schedules, mobility issues, or living in remote areas, accessibility has proven to limit the ability to maximise and complete health screenings.
With at-home sampling, convenience and comfort can be achieved for every individual, ensuring receival of the correct care from the offset, from diagnostics right through to treatments.
Patient centricity is defined as “putting the patient first in an open sustained engagement of the patient, to respectfully and compassionately achieve the best experience and outcome for that person and their family”.
At RDi, we believe that patient centricity should govern the entire healthcare process. Since the development of our unique patient data technology, we have worked to prioritise the patient, pinpointing them as the most important factor when it comes to health screenings.
Refocussing in screenings is essential for delivering the best possible care. When a person is undergoing cancer diagnosis and treatment, they “might feel alienated and voiceless at a time when they’re also learning to navigate an unfamiliar and confusing healthcare system, not to mention dealing with the emotional highs and lows of cancer diagnosis, treatment or recovery”.
We understand this and have already made a revolutionary step towards smooth and easy screenings for the patient.
United by Unique
RDi unites unique patient data with automated and accelerated sample collection kitting. What does this mean? Well, our technology takes each individual patient’s data to be transformed and used to track and trace each component of a self-sampling kit, ensuring that each individual receives a kit that is unique to them.
Tailoring a diagnostic pathway that suits an individual needs starts with a personalised sample collection process.
How do we achieve this? Through state-of-the-art camera verification. We traceably monitor the assembly of each kit; each stage of the production line checks that the components in the kit align with the receiving patient’s data.
Choosing RDi as your sample collection kitting and fulfilment provider also offers end-to-end visibility, right from the GP to the sample collection kit distribution, to patient completion and onward laboratory reception.
Monitoring kitting production at an individual patient’s level results in RDi providing the ability to unite various organisations and personnel in the healthcare supply chain simply through a unique individuals data.
People-centred care focuses on the health and wellbeing of entire populations or communities, aiming to improve healthcare systems and access to all.
RDi has united businesses with their cohort of patients across the globe. We extend our technological data capture and processing abilities to deliver unique insights. The very same patient ID data can be used to by healthcare businesses to understand geographical behaviours, uptakes in completed kits and onward transportation journeys.
We house the ability to process billions of records, which provides private and public health organisations with the capability to shape their services to suit the people they serve.
People-centred care:
As defined by WorldCancerDay.Org, ‘this model takes the widest possible view, as individuals actively participate in their treatment’’. RDi are helping private and public healthcare organisations to create an initial diagnostic action that can be completed remotely or in the comfort of your own home.
This self-sampling revolution listens to the ‘’experiences and values’’ put forward by those receiving care. Our unique technology is ‘’intended to address the health of entire populations, ensuring that healthcare systems are designed to serve all people equitably and inclusively.’’.
Although we may focus on patient-to-people-centred care, with unique and individual screening kits, we also use our post event analysis platform to help businesses understand their fulfilment.
The intel relating to geographical concentrations and other behavioural insights helps our services to conform to people-centred trends. Going beyond the individual person and uniting communities.
Connecting a wider community
People-centred care recognises that engaging communities beyond the clinical setting is paramount to creating a more humane and holistic healthcare experience for cancer diagnostics.
As a strong partner of NHS England’s National Bowel Cancer Screening Programme, RDi has produced over 100 million kits to date.
Not only has that enabled public healthcare systems to access a broader range of patients, through remote specimen collection, but it has joined a wider community of patients who have balanced their physical and mental requirements with the importance of screening for early detection of such cancerous diseases.
Remote sample collection has educated the typical patient, as well as a range of public and private organisations across the globe. It is not enough to offer a sample collection service in the clinic, where visits can often be impossible and participant rates drop.
Instead, RDi is empowering various businesses to enhance efficiency and provide the most sought-after diagnostic services exactly where the patient feels most comfortable.
Each unique patient kit that leaves our facilities becomes part of a wider movement to transform the healthcare sector, by enabling people to collect a sample in a location that suits them.
Our unique insights, data and analytical supply chain technology is enabling the evaluation of post-issuance activity. Here, we can help the healthcare supply chain to create dynamic messaging to reflect regional variations and campaigns, serving all people equitably and inclusively.
Show your support and join RDi’s self-sampling revolution this #WorldCancerDay by sharing our LinkedIn post here.
