A Test Strip & a 10 Year Plan: How Rapid Testing Can Help the NHS Screen Smarter

Screening More, Spending Less
What the Pandemic Taught Us
A Broader Toolkit Than Most People Realise
Taking Innovation to Scale
From Patient Monitoring To System Savings
Supporting the Vision

Chris Yates, Chief Commercial Officer of Abingdon Health and co-founder of the company, explores how the rapid testing behaviours that took hold during the pandemic can be channelled into a broader transformation of NHS screening, and why lateral flow innovation is central to the NHS’s ambition to catch more conditions earlier, and at lower cost. Abingdon is proud to partner with Cognizant on delivering innovative near-patient testing solutions to national health services.

Following a recent birthday, I received a present from the NHS. Somewhere at home, there’s a bowel-cancer screening kit with my name on it. I know it’s there. I know I should do it. I haven’t yet, have you?

I’m not proud of that, but I suspect most people reading this will understand it. The NHS sends out millions of these kits every year, and a significant number sit on kitchen counters, under bathroom sinks, in that drawer nobody opens. Not because people don’t care about their health. Because that’s human nature.

That gap between knowing and doing is one of the central challenges facing NHS screening today, and it’s one that innovation in rapid diagnostics is genuinely positioned to help close.

Screening More, Spending Less

The NHS’s 10-year plan sets out a clear ambition: shift care from hospital to home, catch conditions earlier, and focus the system on prevention rather than cure. Adult Screening for the Nation – the coordinated national initiative bringing together six adult screening programmes (breast, bowel, cervical, diabetic eye, abdominal aortic aneurysm, and others) – sits squarely within that ambition.

The financial logic is compelling. Early-stage cancer diagnosis averages £11,200 per patient, compared to £23,800 at late stage, and that’s before accounting for the wider economic (and emotional) impact. The annual cost of breast cancer treatment alone could rise by almost 40% to £3.6 billion by 2034. The NHS in England has set a target to diagnose 75% of cancers at an early stage by 2028 – a goal it will struggle to meet on current trajectories.

Participation is the problem. Breast cancer screening uptake fell to 64.6% in 2022/23, down from 71.1% in 2018/19 and has not recovered. Elsewhere, cervical screening coverage has declined from 74.2% in 2013/14 to 68.8% in 2023/24. These are not failures of clinical design. They are failures of accessibility and convenience, and in some of these cases lateral flow technology can make a difference.

What the Pandemic Taught Us

During COVID, millions of people tested themselves at home, without clinical supervision, and acted on the results. Lateral flow testing – until then largely confined to professional settings – became part of daily life.

Indeed, bowel cancer screening uptake actually increased during the pandemic. Breast and cervical programmes paused because they required appointments, travel, and clinical settings. The bowel test – a kit you do at home, in private, on your own schedule – carried on, and more people did it. If you’re looking for evidence that convenience drives participation, there it is.

The public demonstrated, under pressure, that it will engage with self-test screening when the tools are accessible and the purpose is clear. The question is how to build on that.

A Broader Toolkit Than Most People Realise

At Abingdon Health, we’ve supported the development of more than 50 rapid tests across a wide range of clinical areas, and the scope of what lateral flow can do to support screening initiatives is expanding fast.

Stroke screening is one frontier. We’re proud to have supported Upfront Diagnostics’ LVOne stroke test, where speed of detection directly determines the treatment pathway for patients and ultimately improves outcomes. In oncology, we are seeing innovations in areas such as cervical and prostate cancer screening that could support testing at home.

PSA (prostate-specific antigen) testing – long discussed as a potential screening tool for prostate cancer but historically limited by precision concerns – is an area where lateral flow innovation may yet change the picture. The technology is improving, and the case for accessible, home-based prostate screening is only growing stronger. New research recently published in Germany analysed results from the PROBASE trial of just over 39,000 men having prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood tests in combination with MRI scans. Encouraging results were comparable with those from women having a mammogram as part of Germany’s successful breast cancer screening programme.

Taking Innovation to Scale

Developing a lateral flow test that is clinically accurate, manufacturable at volume, and Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency-cleared is genuinely hard. Documentation alone runs to thousands of pages; the quality management infrastructure takes years to build. Abingdon has spent the better part of two decades building the framework that makes it achievable, and we use it not only for our own products but to support UK startups and university spinouts bringing the next generation of ideas to market.

But developing a test and deploying it across a national health system are two entirely different challenges. The graveyard of good diagnostics is full of products that proved themselves clinically and then stalled, unable to navigate NHS procurement, integrate with existing infrastructure, or operate at the volume a population-scale programme demands. Innovation without the means to deliver it at scale is, ultimately, just proof of concept.

That’s where the partnership with Cognizant changes the picture. They bring what we don’t: the systems capability, delivery infrastructure, and NHS programme experience to take a proven innovation and turn it into a programme that works for millions of people, not just hundreds.

From Patient Monitoring To System Savings

Sexual health is another area where the home-testing model has clear advantages. People are considerably more likely to test for sexually transmitted infections in the privacy of their own home than to visit a clinic. Confidentiality matters, and lateral flow tests that remove the barrier of a clinical setting have real potential to increase uptake among groups that current provision consistently underserves, helping the system save money.

The over-the-counter category is broader still. Vitamin D deficiency tests, UTI (urinary tract infection) monitoring, and tests for emerging diseases such as Lyme disease are all areas where accessible, accurate lateral flow tests can shift health management from reactive to proactive. Taken together, they point toward something the NHS has long sought: a population that manages its health rather than waiting for something to go wrong.

One area I’m particularly proud of is our work in companion diagnostics. Abingdon developed Seralite, one of the first lateral flow companion diagnostic tests for monitoring multiple myeloma patients in remission or relapse. That work sits within a broader trend: the use of lateral flow for patient stratification, where a simple test can determine whether a patient actually needs an expensive therapeutic intervention.

The NHS spends significant sums on treatments that, in some cases, are no longer necessary. Lateral flow tests that can quickly and accurately identify patients – removing unnecessary therapeutic use without compromising care – have the potential to save the system millions. That is not a distant ambition. We are working on it now.

Supporting the Vision

The vision we share is straightforward: someone with a concern orders a test through the NHS app, receives it at home, and is directed to the right clinical pathway fast.

The technology is ready. The public appetite is there. My bowel cancer test is waiting for me at home, and I’m going to do it this week.

Perhaps that’s where all of this starts…

As a fully integrated lateral flow development manufacturing CDMO and CRO with ISO 13485 and ISO 9001 certifications and dual UK/US manufacturing capabilities, our team brings extensive experience in analytical performance studies, clinical trial management, and regulatory strategy for rapid test and companion diagnostic assay development, and other in vitro diagnostic solutions. Get in touch with Abingdon Health to explore how our integrated approach can accelerate your path to market access.