Flatiron Health UK responds to the publication of England’s National Cancer Plan
Today we welcome the ambitions set out in the government’s National Cancer Plan to improve outcomes for people with cancer and reduce lives lost to this disease which affects 1 in 2 people in the UK. The plan sets clear priorities for prevention, faster diagnosis and access to treatment, and ensuring patients across the country receive the latest therapies, digital tools and innovations.
We are particularly encouraged by the Plan’s acknowledgement and focus on the role of health data as a driver of improvement, including its commitment to support Cancer Alliances and NHS hospitals in accessing the data they need to improve care, and to support and unlock world-class cancer research opportunities.
Access to high-quality health data is essential. But experience shows that access alone is not enough. The real challenge lies in the reliability, richness and usability of that data.
Much of the information captured during routine cancer care is not readily structured or easy to analyse. It remains fragmented across systems, stored in different formats and often difficult to use at scale. As a result, clinical teams can find it difficult to compare their practice, understand how their patients are faring outside of clinical trials, or draw insights that could improve care. Transforming this information into research-ready data is resource-intensive and places additional burden on already stretched NHS teams, leading to missed opportunities to learn from real-world patient experiences.
At Flatiron, our partnerships with NHS organisations across the UK – including in Leicester, Leeds and Newcastle – are helping to overcome these challenges. We work with clinical groups, with involvement from their local patient communities, to securely transform routinely collected data at no cost to the NHS. The resulting high-quality, anonymised data can be securely accessed by the local NHS team and approved researchers through a Secure Data Environment to help answer the most difficult questions about cancer, supporting research that is in the patient and public interest.
The National Cancer Plan recognises that progress will depend on collaboration, noting that this is a plan “powered by partnership” rather than by the NHS alone. Our partners consistently tell us that unlocking the full value of cancer data requires shared effort – combining clinical expertise, patient involvement, and trusted data capabilities:
Consultant Oncoplastic Surgeon, Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
We cannot be doing everything, and I think we should concentrate all our efforts on what we should be doing, which is delivering as good a patient care as we can do. We have to be accepting that to do what is required to process and correct this [patient] data, takes specialist skills and specialist expertise.
Flatiron brings a proven, sustainable model that combines responsible data transformation with engagement from people who are living with cancer at every stage of the process.
As the National Cancer Plan is implemented, we urge the government to go further by actively championing partnerships between the NHS, patients, researchers and responsible industry experts to turn these ambitions into reality. Our response is simple: we must not overlook the additional capacity, capabilities and insights that partners and patients can offer. Together, we can go further and faster for everyone affected by cancer.
