This study seeks to understand why some people may not complete a poo test, that looks for traces of blood, after going to the GP with symptoms of possible bowel cancer. By understanding what problems people experience, and whether there are particular groups of patients who experience these, we can work to develop strategies to support people to complete this test.

When people go to their GP with symptoms that suggest bowel cancer they are asked to complete a poo test at home. The results show who needs to go to hospital for investigation. Some people don’t return their poo test to the GP. This might mean their diagnosis of bowel cancer is delayed. We want to understand if people from different areas are more, or less, likely to complete the test. By identifying areas where test completion is low, we plan to work with communities to understand what the barriers and challenges are. We hope to find out what could change to make it easier to complete these tests, to help more people with bowel cancer to be diagnosed early.

The March 2025 edition of the COLO-COHORT newsletter is here!

Wow! We have now recruited 10,000 patients to the COLO-COHORT study!

The COLO-SPEED Research Team have launched a new Patient and Public involvement Group in the North East!

COLO-COHORT aims to develop a “risk stratification tool” to help determine which patients are at highest risk of having polyps or cancer; this tool will be able to be used in the future to work out which patients need to be referred to endoscopy for investigation.

COLO-DETECT is a randomised control trial which evaluated whether colonoscopy assisted with the GI Genius™ Intelligent Endoscopy Module improves the detection of abnormalities such as polyps and cancer compared to standard colonoscopy.