Early Bladder Cancer Diagnosis Starts at Home: #spotthedrop in your urine sample collection
The theme of this year’s Bladder Cancer Awareness Month is #SpotTheDrop. With the World Bladder Cancer Patient Coalition driving the movement forward to encourage early detection when it comes to cancer diagnosis. RDi are passionate about supporting this initiative through our self-sample collection kits and the safe2Pcanter urine collection device.
Every year, over 610,000 people are diagnosed with bladder cancer, 19,000 of these people are diagnosed in the UK, and 1.9 million people find themselves living with the condition.
Bowel cancer is the fifth most common cancer in the Western world and is seen more commonly in men, although it can have a worse outcome in women.
Each year May marks Bladder Cancer Awareness Month, an event that showcases the commitment to raising awareness, overcoming hurdles and supporting communities in educating, diagnosing and treating bladder cancer.
By empowering people and communities with the knowledge they need surrounding bladder cancer symptoms, we’re on a journey towards early detection and timely diagnosis increasing.
Spot The Drop – Challenge Uncertainty Around Bladder Cancer Symptoms
One of the major obstacles to bladder cancer diagnosis is recognising the symptoms associated with the illness.
Blood in the urine (Haematuria), painful urination or irregular urination are all symptoms which are often mistaken for other conditions, leading to delayed diagnosis. This year’s campaign focus is on challenging the uncertainty and encouraging people to take the symptoms seriously, ensuring that they seek medical advice without delay.
1 In 5 adults with visible blood in the urine and 1 in 12 adults with non-visible blood in the urine are subsequently discovered to have bladder cancer.
#SpotTheDrop, the World Bladder Cancer Patient Coalition’s 2025 campaign, indicates the urgency of detecting key symptoms such as haematuria and contacting a doctor as soon as possible, as when caught early, the survival rate from bladder cancer can be up to 90%.
If you spot blood, act fast.
However, Professor Hussain has noted that “Since Covid, there has been an issue with patients not managing to get their GP appointments”. This has meant that more cases are coming in later, once the cancer has become life-limiting.
A breakthrough in diagnostics could make it easier to detect illness in patients earlier.
Breaking the barriers to early diagnosis
The bladder is part of your urinary system. Its role is to filter waste products from your blood and transport the waste products or urine out of the body. Most tumours will develop on the inner layer of the bladder, and as they grow deeper into the bladder layers, it can become harder to treat.
The World Bladder Cancer Patient Coalition is working hard to increase early detection and diagnosis, which is achieved through a urine test to detect haematuria or blood in the urine. However, there is currently no screening programme for bladder cancer, as there is no reliable screening test. Therefore, making urine sample collection as accessible and easy to complete as possible for patients is the most effective way to ensure that the cancer is detected as early as possible.
As there isn’t currently a reliable screening alternative for bladder cancer, the only way to seek diagnosis is through sample collection and the clinical diagnostics pathway, which can only be entered after symptoms prevail. Therefore, sample collection services and clinical diagnostics businesses play the most important role in bladder cancer diagnosis to date.
Due to the challenges around recognising and knowing the symptoms for bladder cancer and the lack of availability of GP appointments, quick diagnosis is heavily reliant upon remote sample collection, which is only offered when symptoms are present, rather than pre-emptively during a screening process like other cancer initiatives such as cervical, bowel, breast and prostate.
Facilitating Clinical Diagnosis of Bladder Cancer
At RDi, our mission is to revolutionise the diagnostics field and the available pathways for seeking diagnosis, facilitating faster results through our range of at-home sample collection kits and devices.
Until there are accurate screening methods, early bladder cancer diagnosis will remain dependent on a convenient sample collection process which benefits both the end user and the diagnostics lab.
Remote urine sample collection in bladder cancer
The convenience of remote sample collection is not only a benefit to the end user, but also for the healthcare provider and the diagnostic laboratory that receives the sample.
For the end user an accessible option for diagnosis is highly valuable. A remote sample collection kit is highly accessible since there is no need to attend a clinic. Through remote delivery the patient can comfortably collect a self-sample in their home and send it directly for diagnostics.
The same self-collection kits are designed for quality and reliability for the laboratories performing clinical diagnostics too. Transport following its onward journey is where samples are susceptible to contamination, but with self sampling kits there has been thorough testing and validation to ensure the compliance of the UN3373 packaging, as well as the medical devices used to collect biological samples, which means collected materials remain safe, secure and most importantly, testable.
As a result, the self-sampling approach has had a significant impact of cancer initiatives, particularly with global screening, we now have the bowel cancer screening programme, which offers a proactive test that can identify bowel cancer in its earliest stages to ensure the highest chance of successful treatment for a patient who is diagnosed as a result.
Opting for a turnkey solution that provides end-to-end kitting services is ideal for a diagnostics provider. The regulations which must be adhered to are so strict, and their responsibilities so crucial to a patient’s diagnosis and treatment. Remote sample collection ensures that the kit received by the patient comes with the necessary compliant packaging to send it to the laboratory for testing.
Introducing a seamless kitting solution for bladder cancer diagnostics
We facilitate streamlined, efficient sample collection and testing with our urine sample collection kit, which utilises our innovative collection device, the safe2Pcanter.
The safe2Pcanter is where innovation meets at-home sample collection. We are seeing the rise of at-home sample collection as a result of working towards increasing the accessibility of healthcare services. The safe2Pcanter is designed to be used at home, offering an alternative to bulky collection devices such as plastic cups.
The easier you make it for patients to complete a sample, the more likely they will be to do it.
Our urine sample collection kits are UKCA registered, conforming to UK legislation and UN3373 packaging requirements, and also come equipped with compliant repackaging components for onward shipment.
This ensures that clinical diagnostic laboratories receive samples safely, ensuring that the required testing can be completed in order to quickly diagnose patients, enabling treatment to begin promptly where required.
As a healthcare provider, being able to offer a compliant, off-the-shelf urine sample collection kit for bladder cancer testing alleviates the pressure of needing a GP appointment, which means that the delays that are currently faced can be minimised.
If you’re interested in learning more about how RDi can support you in increasing accessibility to bladder cancer diagnosis, contact our team of experts today!
