Funding for point-of-care home blood monitoring      

FOI REFERENCE: 24093    FOI DATE: 9^th May 2024   

Request:

I am emailing under the Freedom of Information Act to request information regarding funding schemes for cancer-patients’ treatments and monitoring. 

Question 1:  

1. Does your trust provide funding for point-of-care home blood monitoring devices for people with cancer who are receiving systemic anticancer therapy? (Y/N) For added context, examples of such devices include Xprecia (by Universal Biosensors) & Liberty (by Entia), and they offer full white blood counts to assess side effects caused because of cancer treatment. 
2. If yes, how is it funded? (please elaborate) 

•  If not, is it because the pharmaceutical company already funds it? (Y/N) (please elaborate) 
• If yes, out of which budget does it come out from? (please elaborate) 

• Furthermore, if these funding schemes do not currently exist at your trust and are not funded by pharmaceutical companies, are there plans to fund such initiatives in the future? (Y/N)  
• If yes, please give some examples of some of the funding initiatives. Examples of some of these funding pots include but are not limited to, the virtual wards fund, the digital fund, and the Improved Better Care Fund (iBCF)? (Please provide a detailed answer) 

Response:

Worcestershire Acute Hospital NHS Trust do not provide POC blood testing kits for any of our patients, it is not something we have needed to look into because our patients are able to get bloods taken in the community due to all GP’s in Worcestershire using the same system (ICE) pathology system

As far as we are aware, there are no plans to fund any initiatives for this, although it may be something we would look into along with virtual wards / AOS in future, but probably not for SACT