Cancer patients undergoing treatment often face a grueling routine of frequent hospital visits and blood tests to monitor various health indicators. Now a device called Liberty can change that, allowing patients to perform these tests from the comfort of their own home.
Liberty has been trialled at a hospital in Manchester and will now be rolled out across the UK: it allows users to take blood samples, analyze them and share the results with their medical team remotely, offering a potential game-changer in the management of cancer treatment.
Home blood tests: a relief for patients
For cancer patients, the ability to perform several of the many blood tests at home is a great relief. Lynn Thompson, one of the patients who participated in the trial, says that the device has significantly reduced stress and anxiety in her life. “I just fell in love with this car, to be honest. It was so simple to follow and use,” the 52-year-old said.
Thompson explains that Liberty has allowed her to no longer be so tied to a fixed schedule of hospital visits, which she found physically and mentally exhausting, especially given her fear of needles. “When I went to the collection room in the chair, I often fainted. This had a knock-on effect: it made me feel really bad all day,” she says. “The machine took all this away, it's a simple prick on the finger that doesn't hurt. It's a very small amount of blood and then it's hidden. There is no stress or anxiety.”
Benefits for the healthcare system
In addition to being more convenient for patients, moving blood tests from the confines of the hospital to the comfort of patients' homes could also mean savings for health systems. Sacha Howell, senior lecturer in medical oncology at the University of Manchester, points out that there are significant costs involved in running collection units.
If all patients were able to simply do blood tests themselves at home, everything would be much more efficient and economical.
At-home blood test, promising results (but more data still needed)
Trials conducted at The Christie complex in Manchester, one of the most important cancer centers in Europe, have given promising results, even if the number of patients is low. 22 patients who participated in a home study, complemented by regulatory approval trials involving 470 patients.
These low numbers obviously suggest some caution. It is still early days for this technology and more research is needed. Regulatory approval provides no guidance on efficacy or clinical utility at this stage – such questions would need to be addressed in future clinical trials of the device before it can be used more widely.
Future perspectives
Despite the right reservations, however, the regulatory approval for the world's first home blood test analyzer is news for the diagnoses. It will provide more timely information on the health status of patients. It will allow healthcare workers to preventatively address complications. It will reduce hospitalizations and treatment interruptions.
If larger-scale trials confirm the promising results obtained so far, Liberty could truly represent a turning point in the management of cancer treatment.
