The importance of new approaches to healthcare – our innovative digital solution explained

With an ageing society and cancer rates at a level never previously seen – 1 in 2 people will develop some form of cancer during their lifetime – at QuestPrehab™ we’re offering a personalised prehabilitation (prehab) service to improve patients’ lives and outcomes.

Despite advancements in treatment and diagnosis, allowing people to live longer with cancer, dangerous delays in cancer care have sadly become normalised. 

For example, more than 380,000 cancer patients haven’t been treated on time since 2015. And with the Royal College of Radiologists warning of a 30% shortfall in clinical radiologists and a 15% shortfall in clinical oncologists, the delay is likely to worsen in the coming years.

This means patients are not only sitting on waiting lists for months, the costs from surgical complications and morbidity post-operatively are increasing. We are passionate about providing a solution to address these challenges whilst helping patients maintain quality of life throughout their journey.

Prehab focuses on the g (I assume good)? health and activity of people before their major surgery and / or treatment to assist their recovery and lower the likelihood of complications- works best if it’s a multispeciality approach and personalised to a person’s holistic and clinical needs.

Prehabilitation  allows people to use the time between diagnosis and treatment to improve their health. It’s been proven to work and its benefits are being increasingly recognised.

For example, a report by the Centre for Perioperative Care found that if implemented within the NHS, prehab could “vastly improve its efficiency, and improve patient outcomes, by turning waiting lists into preparation lists”.

The CPOC believes people on waiting lists should view it as an opportunity to increase their physical activity, improve their diet and general health, and to prepare mentally for their procedure and rehabilitation.

The report echoes the views of the Royal College of Anaesthetists which believes “fitter patients who are able to improve their health and activity levels recover from surgery more quickly and with fewer complications. What you do in the time leading up to surgery can have a really big impact on your recovery and long-term health.”

Our success has been evident from the very beginning, benig one of the first digital prehab services, which started in one hospital and rapidly grew to serve an entire region. Over the last three years we have provided a range of highly personalised, targeted and supervised digital prehab services to NHS cancer patients – and are excited to have recently diversified our remit to also work with liver transplant patients.

Our services cover four key areas – physical fitness, nutrition, mindfulness and lifestyle support – and our patients are less likely to be readmitted to hospital, enjoy improved health related quality of life, return to work earlier and need less involvement with regards to social and primary care.

By delivering our services digitally – we have eliminated the challenges associated with delivering prehab to patients – which means our method is both scalable and cost efficient making wide-scale adoption possible. It can be used in any healthcare setting and doesn’t require any modifications to pre-existing infrastructure, processes, patient pathways, or systems.

Accessing a prehab course in their own home means patients don’t need to travel to a prehab unit and widens access to those who may not be able to attend in-hospital sessions. Proof of this is our recent signing of a pioneering contract to provide services to patients in China.