Our Lung cancer team and Roche have been shortlisted for two awards after demonstrating the benefits of giving patients an immunotherapy treatment subcutaneously (injected under the skin) instead of intravenously.
They are finalists in the ‘Best Contribution to Improving the Efficiency of NHS services’ and the ‘Best Pharmaceutical Partnership with the NHS’ categories.
The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre was one of the first hospitals in the North West to roll out the subcutaneous version for lung cancer, benefiting patients and the NHS by reducing treatment time while maintaining quality.
The collaboration with Roche is the first real-world study of its kind and used time-stamped data to show that giving the treatment by injection under the skin significantly reduced the time each patient spends on chemotherapy treatment units by an average of 54 minutes each time. It is also far more efficient for hospitals, meaning more patients can treated and there is less drug wastage.
Hala Ghoz, Advanced Clinical Practitioner in Lung Cancer, said:
The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre is a national leader in immunotherapy treatment innovation and we quickly recognised the potential benefits of subcutaneous options for our patients and for the NHS as a whole.
The subcutaneous treatment takes just 7 minutes to administer, compared with 30 to 60 minutes for the intravenous version. Patients find it more convenient as they spend less time in hospital. The NHS benefits from this increased capacity and it has also reduced wastage.
Lung Cancer Advanced Nurse Practitioner Sarah Rose said:
We know that our patients really value spending less time in hospital, and we hope that by adopting these new treatment methods that we can make life easier and less complicated for them.
Our Metastatic Breast Cancer team and Novartis have also been shortlisted for the ‘Best Pharmaceutical Partnership with the NHS’ award for their pioneering work supporting patients with treatment-related toxicities (side-effects).
Both teams will find out whether they have won at an awards ceremony on 19 March 2026. The HSJ Partnership Awards recognise collaborations between industry and the NHS.
