Written by: QuestPreHab
With an ageing society and cancer rates at a level never previously seen - 1 in 2 people will develop
some form of cancer during their lifetime - at QuestPrehab we’re offering a personalised
prehabilitation (prehab) service to improve patients’ lives and outcomes.
Despite advancements in treatment and diagnosis, allowing people to live longer with cancer,
dangerous delays in cancer care have sadly become normalised.
For example, more than 380,000 cancer patients haven’t been treated on time since 2015. And with
the Royal College of Radiologists warning of a 30% shortfall in clinical radiologists and a 15% shortfall
in clinical oncologists, the delay is likely to worsen in the coming years.
This means patients are not only sitting on waiting lists for months, the costs from surgical
complications and morbidity post-operatively are increasing. We are passionate about providing a
solution to address these challenges whilst helping patients maintain quality of life throughout their
journey.
Prehab focuses on the health and activity of people before their major surgery and / or treatment to
assist their recovery and lower the likelihood of complications- works best if it’s a multispeciality
approach and personalised to a person’s holistic and clinical needs.
Prehabilitation allows people to use the time between diagnosis and treatment to improve their
health. It’s been proven to work and its benefits are being increasingly recognised.
For example, a report by the Centre for Perioperative Care found that if implemented within the
NHS, prehab could "vastly improve its efficiency, and improve patient outcomes, by turning waiting
lists into preparation lists”.
The CPOC believes people on waiting lists should view it as an opportunity to increase their physical
activity, improve their diet and general health, and to prepare mentally for their procedure and
rehabilitation.
The report echoes the views of the Royal College of Anaesthetists which believes “fitter patients
who are able to improve their health and activity levels recover from surgery more quickly and
with fewer complications. What you do in the time leading up to surgery can have a really big
impact on your recovery and long-term health.”
Over the last three years we have provided a range of highly personalised, targeted and supervised
digital prehab services to NHS cancer patients - and are excited to have recently expanded our remit
to also work with liver transplant patients.
Our services cover four key areas – physical fitness, nutrition, mindfulness and lifestyle support – and
our patients are less likely to be readmitted to hospital, enjoy improved health related quality of life,
return to work earlier and need less involvement with regards to social and primary care.
By delivering our services digitally - we have eliminated the challenges associated with delivering
prehab to patients - which means our method is both scalable and cost efficient making wide-scale
adoption possible. It can be used in any healthcare setting and doesn’t require any modifications to
pre-existing infrastructure, processes, patient pathways, or systems.
Accessing a prehab course in their own home means patients don’t need to travel to a prehab unit
and widens access to those who may not be able to attend in-hospital sessions. Proof of this is our
recent signing of a pioneering contract to provide services to patients in China.
We’ll be demonstrating our powerful digital prehab platform and explaining how it can help care
providers, NHS trusts and insurers to improve quality of care and save costs at the HETT 2024
exhibition on the 24th and 25th September.
If you’d like to find out more, have a chat or arrange a meeting we’ll be at stand F50 at London’s
Excel Centre.