Check4Cancer

Background

Check4Cancer operates in the Healthcare & Healthcare Technology sectors, providing cancer risk assessment, cancer screening, cancer diagnostics & cancer genetics to the insured, corporate & self-pay sectors. Check4Cancer was founded in 2014 to improve early cancer detection in the UK private sector in order to help improve cancer survival rates in the UK that currently lag 10-15 years behind most Western countries. As a cancer-focused company with strong clinical leadership, Check4Cancer has built a strong reputation for clinical governance, patient-centred care, with a commitment to deliver high quality clinical care and communication to our clients, patients and partners.

Check4Cancer's screening, diagnostic and gentetics services can be viewed here.

Check4Cancer is committed to delivering high quality clinical cancer care and communication to clients, patients and partners. In order to deliver its goals, Check4Cancer has focused on three main cancer strategies as follows:

Education in the risk factors for common cancers and personal risk assessment
Awareness of the signs and symptoms of common cancers and
Cancer prevention through streamlined, validated yet innovative screening & diagnostic pathways

The UK has a goal to improve overall 10-year cancer survival from 50% to 75% by 2030. The NHS is currently under significant strain and is unlikely to be able to adequately fund the investment required to improve cancer education, prevention and screening.

For more details on Check4Cancer continue reading below...

Approach

Providing support to those who need it

By supporting corporate organisations, private medical insurers and life assurance companies to promote these key parts of the early cancer pathway, Check4Cancer is in an ideal position to influence early cancer detection in the UK’s private sector. Furthermore, Check4Cancer is developing and providing innovative and evidence-based cancer screening, diagnostic and genetic pathways to help drive growth in all three markets (corporate, insured & self-pay). In the last 5 years, Check4Cancer has delivered cancer screening to an increasing number of corporate clients and in the last 3 years has helped Vitality, AXA, Cigna & WPA to introduce cancer screening for their insured members for the very first time. Working with these companies has showcased the excellent work carried out by Check4Cancer and this was acknowledged in November 2021, when Check4Cancer won the ‘Innovation in Health Tech’ award at the Laing Buisson Awards for its ‘MyCancerRisk’ programme, an online cancer risk assessment tool that was developed by Check4Cancer to underpin risk-stratified screening programmes for corporate and insured members, launched in early 2021.

• This has been supported by further development of Check4Cancer’s Cancer Impact Calculator, a model that allows corporates and insurers to understand their ROI following investment in cancer screening

• By building the evidence base for harnessing new technologies in cancer services, whilst ensuring patients receive a quicker and/or more accurate diagnosis, Check4Cancer will create a real opportunity to improve early cancer detection in the UK.

• By having a strong R&D presence, with ongoing plans to build a digital skin cancer pathway with a Skin App for taking high quality images and an AI model to automate skin lesion reporting. The AI model will be built using Check4Cancer’s bank of more than 50,000 skin lesion images with tagged clinical information.

Impact

The development in 2021 of the award-winning MyCancerRisk programme, a cancer risk questionnaire that allows employers and insurers to offer personalised risk assessment and tailored screening to their employees/members, has led to increased revenues across corporate and insured sectors. In addition to this, development of the digital skin cancer model will strengthen the current skin diagnosis pathway, while opening up access to NHS skin cancer services and internationalisation of the underlying AI model.

Check4Cancer has set the industry standard for the development and delivery of early cancer detection services, underpinned and continuously improved by review of patients experience and patient outcomes by prospective clinical audit.

For more information on MyCancerRisk, please click here.

Journey So Far

Check4Cancer worked in collaboration with Vivolution & Open Frequency in early 2022 to write & submit a Smart Grant application to Innovate UK in April 2022 to seek funding for Check4Cancer’s digital skin cancer pathway project.

The collaboration with Vivolution & Open Frequency was crucial in presenting the risks and as well as a detailed project management plan that contributed to the high judges’ score and funding being awarded by Innovate UK in June 2022. The award of £350,000 represents 70% funding of the total project costs and comes only two months after a Knowledge Transfer Partnership grant from Innovate UK to employ a data scientist in partnership with the University of Essex.

This additional Smart grant award will provide funding for the development of a Skin App to take high-quality skin images, as well as an AI model for skin lesion reporting that will be built with Check4Cancer’s large bank of skin images, each labelled with a wealth of clinical information. Vivolution and Open Frequency will provide a range of services as part of the skin cancer project including development of the front-end Skin App, commercial validation of the App & project management.

In addition to both grants from Innovate UK in early 2022, Check4Cancer won “Diagnostic Provider of the Year” at the 2018 Health Investor Awards, for delivery of patient-centred care, with strong outcome data, that disrupted cancer diagnostics in insured and corporate sectors. Check4Cancer also won the “Innovation in Health Tech” award in November 2021 at Laing Buisson Healthcare Awards for its MyCancerRisk online platform.

Finalist in two categories at 2022 Health Investor Awards:

• “Tech Provider of the Year” for MyCancerRisk & Cancer Impact Calculator
• “Diagnostic Provider of the Year” for clinical audit of diagnostic cancer pathways

What's Next?

The launch of the MyCancerRisk online platform has led to a number of high profile clients including Microsoft and Marks & Spencer and Check4Cancer’s digital skin cancer pathway will be funded by the secured grants with matched internal funding.

Development of the digital skin cancer model will:

• Increase market share of insured skin cancer diagnostic market by expanding current clinical pathway.

• Increase share of self-pay skin cancer diagnosis pathway.

• Allow internationalisation of skin diagnosis services outside the UK by commercialisation of the model.

Pilot testing of prototype Skin App in clinic:

• Further development after pilot studies before launch.

• Development of AI model for skin lesion reporting.