Unique journey

Personalisation is the future of cancer care

What is often referred to under the umbrella term of ‘cancer’ is, of course, far more complex.

Over two hundred distinct diseases are classified as cancers, with each type harbouring individual symptoms and treatment pathways.

Moreover, a patient’s individual genetics and the biology of the tumour itself can impact the behaviour of the disease, response to treatment and eventual outcome.

Despite an estimated success rate of 30% to 60%, currently all patients diagnosed with the same condition receive the same first-line treatment, according to a report from the NHS.

In a move to progress treatment efficacy, oncologists widely agree that, in the future, cancer treatments will become personalised to the individual patient. In practice, this will equate to specialists studying the patient genome and tumour DNA on an individual basis: formulating personalised therapies.

Such therapies will be the key to dramatically improving patient outcomes.

At current staffing and training levels, these therapies are a distant notion. Moving towards them will require significant effort to recruit and train highly specialised professionals.

Next step in reversing the skills gap

Healthcare workers and professionals across the cancer pathway including geneticists, health data scientists and researchers must gain a greater insight into individual cancer types for the entire field to progress towards personalised therapies.

Frequently, oncology specialists’ view of the other end of the treatment pathway is obscured; researchers are naturally limited in their practical understanding of how their work translates into patient care, and vice versa for frontline healthcare professionals.

Higher education can help develop such insights, giving both sides a broader translational comprehension of the field.

Similarly, for those with related experience looking to move laterally into oncology, synergising learning, clinical decision-making and research will enable increasing numbers of professionals in the field to effectively transfer their existing skillset into the cancer care space.

While it would be counterproductive to remove a large portion of the oncology workforce from medical practice to upskill on time-intensive programmes, in recent years educational courses have been devised to be delivered through short online modules: enabling professionals to gradually build their skills without significant disruption to their lives and careers.

What’s more, the structure of such agile micro-credentials allows educators – and in turn their students – to keep pace more effectively with rapid research advances: accelerating progress across the oncology field.

As such, not only do such courses provide a holistic comprehension of oncology, but the learning can be directly integrated into professional practice.

Our field’s most effective response to this skills gap crisis must be a renewed focus on upskilling through flexible and accessible education.

Indeed, the development of a broader workforce composed of multi-skilled professionals will be key in bridging this gap: helping to mitigate burnout in the field, develop and deliver more personalised care and ultimately improve patient outcomes.

The University of Manchester’s online Masters programme in Transformative Oncology is designed to upskill cancer professionals and ultimately transform clinical outcomes for patients with cancer.

Contact studyonline@manchester.ac.uk to find out more.