Mobile lung cancer testing in supermarket car parks is to be expanded

A successful pilot scheme to detect lung cancer at an early stage by offering smokers and former smokers computerised tomography scanning in shopping area car parks is to be rolled out more widely.

Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, announced the expansion of the scheme at the Economist’s War on Cancer conference in London on 21 November.

“One of the main things the NHS needs to focus on is early diagnosis in order to improve outcomes,” he told the conference. “The Manchester pilot scheme offering mobile CT scans in community supermarkets found that one in 33 people who walked in off the street had early cancer.”

The pilot scheme sited mobile, low dose CT scanners in three deprived areas of …