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Improving Lung Cancer Outcomes Project - ILCOP

What we are doing

The Improving Lung Cancer Outcomes Project (ILCOP) brought together multidisciplinary healthcare teams from different NHS trusts to share best practice in diagnosing, treating and supporting patients with lung cancer, to ensure improvements in survival and quality of life.

ILCOP drew on data from the National Lung Cancer Audit to identify variations in performance by NHS trusts in delivering lung cancer care. Lung cancer is the commonest cause of cancer death in the western world with around 38,500 people being diagnosed in the UK each year. Long term survival rates for lung cancer patients are generally poor, but there are also wide variations in treatment patterns and survival across the UK. ILCOP's aim was to support multidisciplinary teams to consistently improve standards of care and therefore improve patient outcomes, both in terms of clinical measures and the patient experience.

 ILCOP objectives:

  • To identify the reasons for variations in lung cancer outcomes
  • To apply proven quality improvement methods to target specific problems
  • To collect patient experience data
  • To assess the impact of the changes

What we have produced

Outputs from the Improving Lung Cancer Outcomes Project (ILCOP).
Resources specific to the management of lung cancer patients from the Improving Lung Cancer Outcomes Project

Patient-related information from the Improving Lung Cancer Outcomes Project (ILCOP).

As part of ILCOP, you can explore examples of innovations that require a change in lung cancer services and their multidisciplinary teams. 

The Improving Lung Cancer Outcomes Project (ILCOP) recognises that high-quality data is a key part of the success of the National Lung Cancer Audit database. 

As part of the Improving Lung Cancer Outcomes Project (ILCOP), the 30 ILCOP teams participated in a series of web conferences on topics closely related to their quality improvement plans. 

The ILCOP project is funded by The Health Foundation through its ‘Closing the Gap through clinical communities’ scheme, clinically led by Dr Ian Woolhouse and managed via the RCP's Clinical Effectiveness and Evaluation Unit.