Maggie Throup MP has been keen to set up this group since she joined Parliament but she has held a number of positions including most recently as a junior Health Minister, which meant until now it has not been possible.
The APPG is supported jointly by the Royal Colleges of Radiologist and Pathologists. This week (24th) saw the first meeting of the APPG since its formal inception and the focus was very much on Cancer with Prof Peter Johnson, the National Clinical Director for Cancer as the invited speaker.
The focus was primarily on imaging with Peter talking about the initiatives to reduce the cancer diagnostic backlog and meet the ambition of achieving 75% of cancer diagnoses at Stage 1or 2 (when treatment is most likely to be successful) by 2028.These initiatives include the Community Diagnostics Centres (with 6 more being authorised by the end of May) and the Lung Health Checks, which have been focussed on more deprived communities across the UK.
The meeting was attended by the Presidents of both Royal Colleges, David Wells from the IBMS, and a number of patient charities for cancer as well as parliamentarians, Tim Farron MP, Baroness Finlay and Baroness Golding. Doris-Ann was there to represent BIVDA.
The APPG is starting a short enquiry on Community Diagnostics Centres with two meetings set, one to look at the current status of CDCs and the second to look at how these may be strengthened further. BIVDA of course, is particularly focussed on how CDCs can be enabled to use our solutions for community diagnostics more in the future.
