Transforming the haematology experience: Living with and beyond blood cancer

Blood Cancer Awareness Month is an important time to reflect on the unique challenges people face when diagnosed with blood cancer. Unlike many solid tumour cancers that may have a distinct physical mass in an organ or tissue, blood cancers are systemic, meaning they can affect the whole body. This means that every person’s experience may be different, and the care they receive needs to be just as individual as they are.

At Roche, we believe in a future where blood cancer care is as unique as the person receiving it. We spoke to Inga Kobylecki-Stringer, part of the haematology team at Roche, who has a deep personal passion for equity of care, no matter age, ethnicity or location. With a belief that every patient deserves to be part of the shared decision-making of their disease management, care and treatment goals.

To provide the best support, we follow a simple philosophy: Driven by science, guided by the individual. While clinical characteristics are important, they don't tell the whole story. Holistic care means looking beyond those to see the whole person—their life, their support network, and their needs—and seeing the person behind the diagnosis. Blood cancers cover a wide range of conditions. Some people may live with indolent or a slow-growing condition that only needs occasional monitoring, while others might need urgent and intensive intervention immediately.

Understanding these differences is the key to better care. For example, a younger person might want to talk about how treatment affects their plans for a family. An older person might be more concerned about how treatment fits into their daily life and staying mobile or even concerns the added burden they feel it may have on their wider family.

A critical challenge in haematology is streamlining the pathway to an accurate, timely diagnosis. Unlike conditions with direct screening routes, blood cancers often present with vague or generalised symptoms.

These indirect routes may lead to delays in being seen by a haematologist to get the treatment they need. By looking closely at how patients move through the system, we can find and fix the points where things get stuck, helping people start the care they need sooner.

We also want to make healthcare less of a burden on daily life. For many people, especially those who are older or don’t have an easy way to travel, having to go to a large hospital can be physically and emotionally exhausting and overwhelming.

By working closely with local hospitals, we can help bring high-quality care into the community. This might involve partnering with local teams to try to optimise their services or bringing specialists together to ensure that every patient gets well-rounded care without having to travel far from home, allowing care closer to home.

To make our philosophy a reality, we look for tangible ways to improve the system. Recent examples of this approach have been to work through the patient pathways with different sizes of hospitals to help analyse what the patient journey looks like and identify areas for improvement. Working alongside haematologists, specialist nurses, and pharmacists, we can help identify critical gaps: the need for integrated geriatric expertise within multidisciplinary team meetings or improvements in access to diagnostic services.

In this project, Roche acted as a conduit, helping the hospitals identify operational barriers that were preventing truly personalised care. For example, by helping identify barriers in diagnostic services we are helping faster diagnosis and joined up care ensuring that older patients—who often face the greatest travel and mobility challenges—can receive comprehensive, expert care at their local District General Hospital. This removes the physical and emotional burden of travelling to a distant teaching hospital, helping ensure that needs are met closer to home.

Real change happens when we work together. By connecting with therapy experts, NHS leaders, and local clinical teams, we can share what works best and apply it across the country. Our goal is to make sure the healthcare environment is truly integrated and centered on the patient.

This Blood Cancer Awareness Month, let’s remember that every statistic represents a life, a family, and a unique journey. At Roche, we remain driven by science, guided by the individual. You can help spark the dialogue by sharing your own experiences on your social networks to inspire others. For those seeking support or wishing to learn more, please visit Lymphoma Action.

Together, we can help ensure that every person’s path forward is as unique as they are.