CANDID will ensure that the right patient receives the right test at the right time which will be a considerable cost saving to the NHS and also reduce anxiety in patients by avoiding referral for unnecessary tests.
Dr David Patient is the lead GP for research at Parklands Surgery in Chichester and he and his team are working on the CANDID trial to help GPs decide sooner who needs to be tested for lung or bowel cancer. The team, in particular, Nurse Linda Barratt have worked tirelessly to increase recruitment for CANDID in the Kent, Surrey and Sussex region.
Since September 2015, over 360 patients have been recruited to the CANDID study in the south east of England, and over 140 of these were recruited by the Parklands Surgery research team. The surgery was recently awarded Highly Commended in the Rising Star category in the NIHR Clinical Research Network Kent, Surrey and Sussex Research Awards.
David said: “It is important for research to take place in general practice to help GPs make complicated decisions concerning the investigation and treatment of their patients: often under considerable time pressure. By giving our patients the opportunity to take part in research, we can help to find new ways to diagnose disease and find new effective treatments for our patients... I was very surprised and pleased to win this Award on behalf of the whole team at Parklands, as it recognises all of our staff who work hard to undertake important research work in addition to the usual hectic workload of the surgery”, said David.
This is fantastic news. The nature of the health challenges facing the UK means that GPs, in partnership with patients and carers, have a crucial role to play in developing treatments of patient benefit. That over one million people have volunteered to participate in clinical studies is a mark of how successful this partnership has become. The NIHR hopes that many more people and their families will be encouraged by this to also come forward and help us do more life-saving work. Research cannot happen without them.”
- Simon Denegri, NIHR National Director for Patients and the Public in Research
About the study
The majority of patients who come to their doctor with lung symptoms (for example a cough) or bowel symptoms (for example, loose stool) do not have anything seriously wrong with them. However, a very few people are at risk of cancer. We would like to help doctors diagnose cancer quickly so that potential high risk patients are detected sooner and unnecessary examinations are minimised for those patients that are low risk. This research is about finding what symptoms and examinations are best for predicting lung and bowel cancer.
Read more about the CANDID trial.