The mobile units bringing cancer care to the patient

The move to digital transformation is providing a vital gateway to accessible cancer care in the community, enabling more patients to spend significantly less time attending hospital-based appointments. It is, however, only at the beginning in terms of what remote technology can offer the healthcare sector in the years to come. There is also game-changing potential in its role to offer cancer care to communities that are often hard to reach – whether it be facilitating educational and support sessions within a community that allow NHS staff to provide life-saving information, such as self-examination guidance from specialist breast care nurses, or urology clinicians hosting catheterisation sessions for patients. 

 Hope for Tomorrow’s recent launch of its fourteenth mobile cancer care unit (MCCU) (HEJ – January 2022) heralded a significant feat in next generation stateof-the-art healthcare innovation, and signalled a new chapter in the way this vital care will be delivered. 

Cited as a ‘world first’ in healthcare innovation, in being extendable hydraulically from its sides to create consultation space (the first in the Hope for Tomorrow fleet thus engineered), the unit includes two sound-proof consultation rooms with a videoconferencing facility for private clinics and specialist clinicians’ appointments, mood lighting for patient well-being, a small waiting area with television, and access to a Paxman cooler. The MCCU, which was specially designed and developed for the charity by Bence Coachworks, has the ability to treat up to five patients at any one time, with three treatment chairs and its two consultation rooms.