This month marks 20 years since the start of the national bowel screening programme - and it all started in the West Midlands at Rugby’s Hospital of St Cross.

Since then, more than 22 million samples returned by people in the Midlands and North West region have been logged, analysed and reported.

In the 20 years since the launch, the Bowel Cancer Screening service has seen lots of changes and goes from strength-to-strength, improving outcomes for patients where cancers or early signs of cancer are spotted and reducing pressures on colorectal emergency surgery.

Dr Steve Smith was programme director in 2006. He remembers the original test being quite complicated for people who had to submit three different samples taken over three different days.

“Our biggest challenge was getting people to complete the tests and complete them properly. Around 50% of everyone receiving the original kit returned one compared to 64% today with the new kit, said Steve.

Since 2019 tests have become much more straightforward to complete with just one sample required; the age range of people invited to take part in screening has reduced to 50 from 60 and analysis is much more sensitive and automated.

Steve added, “When we started, samples were analysed by people who were able to spot if poo samples contained anything more than 200 micrograms of blood. Today, automated analysers enable us to identify people with lower amounts of blood in samples being detected and will pick up early signs and early stages of cancer meaning more people can be treated and have better outcomes.”

Dr Kamaljit Kaur Chatha (pictured above)  the Consultant Clinical Scientist at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire leads the hub today.

She said: “Ensuring the reliability of the computerised analysers is very important, and each morning the team tests every device against a control for accuracy. This is repeated several times a day so that each of the six analysers can process 200 samples every 40 minutes.

“We are very proud of our team, some of whom have worked here since the service began, and we make sure they are trained in a wide range of the tasks needed for the programme so that they can switch roles regularly.”

Each week the Rugby hub currently processes 27,000 samples.