ideasIdea
Take lung screening scanners to supermarket car parks in the poorest areas
People most at risk of lung cancer are least likely to attend hospital screening. Manchester showed mobile scanners in car parks reach them. Make this the default model.
The Manchester Lung Health Check found high uptake and a stage shift (about 80% stage I-II) using mobile CT in deprived communities. Propose that national lung screening programmes mandate mobile delivery with same-day cessation support in the most deprived quintile, with uptake and stage as performance metrics.
Hypothesis
Mobile delivery in deprived areas raises uptake from about 30% to at least 50% and yields early-stage detection rates matching affluent fixed-site screening.
Rationale
Travel, cost, and mistrust of hospitals are the barriers; the fix is logistics.
What would test it
Compare uptake and stage in mobile versus fixed-site delivery within the same programme.
Maturity
being tested at scale
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.