Ms Siobhan Gaynor:

It is important to recognise that, predominantly, with incurable, serious or significant medical conditions, patients find each other. When you start asking them where they get their knowledge and support from, it is from each other. It is mainly because that is accessible. As patients, we can do bottom-up stuff, and that is what we do. We network across the island, we chat and we recognise there is a difference. We would welcome some kind of formal method for doing that in terms of patient support.

Survivorship is a very important area in oncology after treatment is finished. It has long been recognised that your treatment is never finished when you have been touched by cancer. Even if you have the cure, it is not over so initiatives around supporting survivorship programmes for people, such as medical exercise programmes and psychology, are very easy ways to move in the right direction. In terms of investment, they would be less but there could be a mechanism for funding patients working together. I am a scientist by training and background and I was shocked when I became a patient for the first time in 2020. Patients know more than you think, because there is a need driving us to find out information. Patients are very much at the heart of all of this, and it is spoken about in terms of empowering them to do more for themselves. The trick North and South of the Border could be to empower a person to go on an exercise programme rather than handing it to them. People could be given vouchers for medical exercise or psychology. Survivorship and quality of life aspects are a good place to start.