Meet the team… Andrew Copland, Programme Manager

Hi, I’m Andrew and I’m a Programme Manager at the Northern Cancer Alliance. I’ve been with the Alliance since December 2020.

I have a diverse background starting as a national general management trainee in the early 90s – my first role was with a Family Health Services Authority! Since then, I’ve had a number of operational roles in Trusts, Primary Care and commissioning organisations where I mainly worked on cancer and end of life but also health inequalities. I have also worked in the private sector for a life sciences consultancy developing a health network for businesses in the North East and also spent some time in local government developing policy and partnership strategies.

My role in the Alliance is to be responsible for Treatment and Personalisation and it has been a real pleasure to work with colleagues over the past few years and to witness the developments and improvements in service delivery and performance that have occurred.

I have to admit to being enthused by every aspect of the Alliances’ work so please don’t ask me to choose where my favourite passion lies! Like many of us I am keen to see the health inequalities that we see around us everyday reduce and therefore it is great to see developments like the Non-Site-Specific pathways close to being embedded right across the ICS area.

I am also really pleased with the progress that has been made with personalisation as this impacts on every aspect of the patient pathway, not just the later stages or post treatment. The work in stratified and patient initiated follow up will hopefully mean that patients have less unwarranted attendances at our already busy providers but also allowing them to return to care as soon as possible should symptoms represent. Given that progress I am really looking forward to seeing our work on prehabilitation and psycho-social really begin to develop in 2023/2024 and beyond.

My work with the Alliance has also meant that I have been able to work very closely with other workstreams and the ICS Diagnostic team have been a group of hard-working colleagues delivering across pathology, imaging and endoscopy. It has been very exciting to be in at the start for both the Endoscopy Network and the Endoscopy Academy and to see the rapid progress being made by both groups.

This is clearly a period of significant change and activity as we recover from the impact of Covid and re-organise ourselves within the new ICS.  As a commissioner in a previous role, I really enjoy chairing the Northern Cancer Alliance’s Commissioning Group and working through the practicalities of how much needed service improvement can be implemented and put into operation.

No two days are ever the same within the Alliance, a reflection perhaps of the diversity of the cancer pathways and the wide range of colleagues required to implement the transformation we are tasked to deliver. It’s been a great opportunity so far and I look forward to more diverse and rewarding days to come.