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ABOUT OUTREACH
About Outreach Research & Innovation Group
Our Founder Prof Andrew Wardley is a renowned clinical entrepreneur, media personality, author of bestselling cancer care books, medical director, and political adviser.
With over 300 publications in leading healthcare journals Prof Wardley is committed to innovative changes in treatments and redesigning models of cancer care across cancer systems,
A cross-sector global leader specialising in international practice changing clinical trials and implementation of their results into practice, he has led many major advances in breast cancer treatment improving outcomes for patients.
In 2021, Prof Andrew Wardley left the NHS, recognising Life Sciences Companies often approach the same clinical sites resulting in a de facto monopoly. NHS infrastructure and workforce challenges conspire with the complexity of cancer trials restricting access to Systemic Anti-Cancer Therapy (SACT) trials.
This has caused the UK’s performance to decline, resulting in patients, clinicians, clinical sites, the NHS, and the economy not achieving the potential for improved health outcomes and economic performance. An average of 28% of EU clinical trial applications have come to the UK. This is only a fraction of the potential market opportunity open to the UK. We are lagging other countries with no signs of improvements. On the contrary, UK delivery of industry-run trials dropped by 44% between 2017/18 and 2021/22, and UK relative ranking against other countries dropped, from 4th to 10th best in the world. The current NHS workforce and skills crisis requires new collaborations to reverse this decline.
In 2020, as part of his continual commitment to health inequalities, Prof Wardley developed, in consultation and support from NHS, McKinsey Business Partners and Life Science Companies, a National Oncology Centre combining multiple business and commercial models aimed at sustainable business, service and product innovation. Upon securing investment, Outreach Research & Innovation Group became an exemplar in innovation startups, demonstrating how scientific discovery through to organisational design and implementation can achieve commercialisation while benefiting multiple patients and partners.
In less than 12 months Outreach Research & Innovation Group was driving economic growth by working with the NHS to de-risk, enable and support innovation and research, while unleashing private sector investments. Outreach Research & Innovation Group continue to invest in regional economic growth that will significantly develop the UK’s innovation capability, improve performance and international investments into research and innovation.
Our Project
Project Portfolio
Health Inequality
This programme aims to increase the number of clinical sites across the UK to deliver Systemic Anti Cancer Therapies (SACT) in primary and secondary sector.
The NHS has areas of excellence, variability and substantial inequities in standards of and access to care for patients with cancer.
Innovative personalised treatments are available to patients as part of a clinical trial, most of which are not accessible to patients at their local hospital.
Cancer trials are available to a limited number of Foundation Trusts, who unfortunately due to culture, lack of skills, appropriate training and experience cause either a delay or prevent the trial from being set up. These trusts often operate in isolation and competition, resulting in duplication of activities and roles across each site without proven innovation or research expertise.
This project operates across England, Wales and Scotland to increase the number of operational clinical sites across the UK speciliasing in Systemic Anti Cancer Therapies as a national oncology centre aimed at improving the access to treatments.
For more information about this collaboration or how to get involved please contact us at contactus@outreach-research-innovation.com
Novartis
Novartis, a Life Science Company, specialise in research, development and commercialisation of new drug therapies medicines, with the aim to deliver them to as many people as possible.
Research and Innovation Hub – Outreach Research & Innovation Group (ORIG) aim to tackle health inequality challenges in the UK.
As an expert in innovation development and integrated care systems, founder Prof Andrew Wardley said “I want innovation to be at the heart of our efforts to build healthcare systems back better and stronger. To achieve this, we need strong leadership from experienced clinical innovators. Clinical expertise is the point of truth that will enable the UK to unleash their vast scientific and technological potential.”
The proportion of people in England who survive their cancer diagnosis has been improving over time due to advances in early diagnosis and treatment. 50% of people diagnosed with cancer now survive their cancer for 10 years or more – double the percentage who survived 40 years ago. As a cancer survivor himself, Prof Andrew Wardley relates to the emotional, physical, and psychological challenges people experience when living with and beyond a life-threatening illness. Through first-hand experience, Prof Wardley relates to patient need for systemic anti-cancer therapy (SACT) drug treatment option, which increases roughly 10-15% per year, improving survival rates for cancer patients.
An average of 28% of EU clinical trial applications have come from the UK (ABPI Clinical Trials Report 2019). This is only a fraction of the potential market opportunity open to the UK. As a National Oncology Centre, Outreach Research & Innovation Group aim to increase efficiencies across time, reliability, governance and cost to deliver SACT treatments in the local communities.
Novartis, a Life Science Company, specialise in research, development and commercialisation of new drug therapies medicines, with the aim to deliver them to as many people as possible. Since 2014, Novartis Oncology has worked on many joint working projects across the UK. In a combined effort to improve treatment pathways and care for cancer patients, Novartis firmly believe that greater collaboration with Life Science Companies can support the NHS in meeting the healthcare challenges of the 21st century. However, billions more lack access to healthcare and medicines. Currently one-third of the world’s population does not have access to essential medicines and, with the global population projected to reach 9 billion by 2050, ensuring broad access is a critical issue.
Novartis has collaborated on joint working projects in Greater Manchester to use data analysis to evaluate the cancer pathway. The focus of these collaborations was to improve health outcomes by tackling the access barriers to cancer treatments across the UK. From his involvement in these projects, Professor Wardley saw the opportunity to use the findings of these projects to establish an independent not for profit, cross sector and multi-disciplinary Research Centre to address the challenges in equitable access and health inequalities
The healthcare system is the fundamental tool to provide access to all facets of healthcare, including asking and addressing the pertinent questions for all patients and ensuring they have access to relevant research opportunities. Healthcare systems must ensure affordability for patients, sustainability for all stakeholders and adaptability to respond to new diseases, changing demographics, scientific discoveries and dynamic technologies.
In less than 12 months, Outreach Research & Innovation Group are driving economic growth by working with partners to de-risk, enable and support research and innovation in the interest of our patients.
For more information about this collaboration or how to get involved please contact us at contactus@outreach-research-innovation.com
Global Better Health
This programme aims to improve health in 8 low-medium income countries, contributing to inclusive economic growth and reducing poverty.
We are proud technical and strategic suppliers developing cancer care strategies contributing to inclusive economic growth and reducing poverty.
As a cancer care partners to low or middle income (LMI) countries working towards, or aspiring to, universal health coverage. These countries benefit from our expertise in redesign and innovation across cancer care.
For more information about this collaboration or how to get involved please contact us at contactus@outreach-research-innovation.com
International Breast Cancer Centre
This programme aims to improve the access to public health cancer treatments through the development of the International Breast Cancer Center.
Research capabilities in Argentina are rising. The country has a well- developed Health Care System, GCP based sites and timelines are similar to some European regulatory agencies. However there remains a gap in infrastructure and know-how to conduct more complex studies which could be addressed by public-private collaborations.
Despite the provision of preventive and early diagnostic services, about 30% of Breast Cancer (BC) cases, detected in the Argentinian public healthcare system are diagnosed at advanced stages of the disease. This trend of delayed diagnoses is of significant concern because the stage at which BC is diagnosed reflects the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of patients, healthcare providers, and underlying systemic characteristics of entire healthcare systems.
The knowledge, attitudes, and practices of the aforementioned parties come together to create barriers that hinder early detection and reduce access to appropriate healthcare services.
We are the operational, strategic and technical partner to national and provincial ministries as well as the network of public hospitals and primary health care units in Argentina which provide care to the poor and uninsured population.
For more information about this collaboration or how to get involved please contact us at contactus@outreach-research-innovation.com
HER2+ Breast Cancer
£100k partnership with The University of Manchester, The Manchester Breast Centre and Action Against Cancer, in a programme exploring HER2+ type breast cancer patients whose tumours are not responding to treatment.
Many patients diagnosed with breast cancer are given treatment to shrink a tumour as a first step, before surgery. Response directed therapy is the optimal approach for HER-2 positive breast cancer, allowing personalised medicine.
Primary medical therapy, formerly “neoadjuvant” therapy, whilst this is very helpful for some patients, unfortunately it does not work effectively in up to half of HER2+ breast cancer cases. This project aims to understand why this is, assess new drugs in lab models, and then with this knowledge design new clinical trials to test the effect of certain drugs with these patients to see what will work best.
The team of scientists plan to analyse residual tumour samples from HER2+ breast cancer patients to discover the “signalling pathways” that remain active and drive the cancer. This can be thought of as like a train travelling to its destination through a number of stations. At most of the stations the signalling technology works flawlessly and there are no problems. However, if one signal has a fault, the train can go on the wrong track leading to tragedy.
A signalling pathway is a series of chemical reactions in which a group of molecules in a cell work together to control an outcome, for example cell division or cell death. After the first molecule in the pathway receives a signal, it activates another molecule, and so on until the cell function is carried out. Abnormal activation of signalling pathways can lead to cancer, and conversely, drugs targeting specific molecules in the pathway may help keep cancer cells from growing.
This three-year research project aims to identify the faulty signals and to design new clinical trials across a cohort of patients.
For more information about this collaboration or if you would like to get involved please contact us
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