Professor Arnold Hill:

The most important thing to understand is that we are talking about screening specific populations. We are trying to identify those people who have been smoking for 20 years. They are far more likely to have lung cancer than a person who has never smoked. We are targeting a specific population to screen, rather than carrying out a population screening. It is a targeted screening programme. Previous efforts at doing CT screening of the entire population have been shown to be not effective. This is a much more targeted programme.

There are also new initiatives in this programme and unique ways we might be able to diagnose lung cancer more easily via a breath test. There is lots to learn from this pilot screening programme that will guide future pathways. We can always increase education. We would not have expected there to be the current level of smoking in 2023. That is where we support legislation to try to help reduce smoking among our population.