Accelerate Associates, a scientific marketing consultancy, has researched the structure of healthcare markets in selected geographical areas including Australia, China, Iberia, Scandinavia, U.A.E and the U.S.A, in order to determine: how the healthcare markets operate in relation to breast cancer screening; how breast cancer screening and diagnostic mammography is funded; and to develop an understanding of the key associations, research groups and other influential organisations in breast cancer for each market.
Accelerate’s research team considered the potential for a self-assessment and training scheme model for other vertical clinical areas. This specifically entailed looking at other types of cancers that are routinely diagnosed using radiographic techniques.
The project output was to support the development of a structured business plan for each global market detailing how each health economy operated; highlighting other clinical areas that could be exploited in the UK and internationally. The research was completed on behalf of Loughborough University‘s Applied Vision Research Centre.
PERFORMS is a self-assessment and training scheme run by the Applied Vision Research Centre at Loughborough University for the UK’s NHS Breast Screening Programme (NHSBSP). The majority of breast cancer screening professionals in the UK sit the PERFORMS scheme, which essentially provides a training set of mammograms with both immediate and national feedback, delivered in two parts of sixty cases to all participants in the UK each year.
Because of its careful design, the PERFORMS scheme offers a tight feedback and training loop coupled with the ability to judge individual’s performance on a national scale. Anonymised and generalised feedback from the national results can further benefit the NHSBSP by detailing skills, thus offering feedback on standardisation at the same time as helping to maintain performance.
The University wished to explore whether PERFORMS would be applicable to health services outside the UK.
Accelerate Associates is a market research and outsourced marketing management services company, for businesses operating in the medical device, laboratory or technical product marketplaces. The team specialises in delivering bespoke primary and secondary research packages to support product development and commercial decision making in the scientific and medical sectors.
Katherine Bourne qualified with a BSc (Hons) from Nottingham University specialising in Nutritional Biochemistry. CIM qualified with more than ten years commercial marketing experience, Katherine has worked in a number of areas including the food, pharmaceutical, laboratory and science sectors.
