Wednesday 2 July 2025
Cambridge (Large seminar room, East Forvie Building) and online
Register here
The first CLOCS project showed that ovarian cancer patients started buying over-the-counter medications up to 8 or 9 months before their diagnosis, with their first GP visit regarding their symptoms on average 3.5 months before diagnosis. This suggests that there is a window-of-opportunity to intervene or nudge the patients towards a GP visit sooner. However, the idea of sharing data, or data donation, for research or health monitoring is not universally accepted.
The CLOCS project’s behavioural science studies are aiming to understand barriers to data sharing and improving the public’s awareness of such research. They are currently setting up the CLOCS-2 study, aiming to expand to other cancer types and new opportunities in digital health research.
About the speaker
Dr James Flanagan completed his PhD in 2002 at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Brisbane, Australia, and has pursued postdoctoral work in Cancer Genetics, Epigenetics and Cancer Epigenetics.
He was awarded a Breast Cancer Campaign Scientific Fellowship (Imperial, 2009-2014) and Senior Lecturer (2014-2019) and is now Reader in Epigenetics (2019-present) in the Division of Cancer, Dept. of Surgery and Cancer, Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London. He was awarded the British Association of Cancer Research Translational Researcher Award in 2011 and the prestigious DataIQ award in 2023 for his work using Shopping Loyalty Cards for early detection of ovarian cancer.
He is the principal investigator (PI) for the OCA funded programme “Risk and Prevention” and PI of the CRUK funded project “Cancer Loyalty Card Study (CLOCS)” In 2021 he was appointed as the Director of the MRes Cancer Biology
About the Bradford Hill seminars
The Bradford Hill seminar series is the principal series of The Cambridge Population Health Sciences Partnership, in collaboration with the PHG Foundation. This comprises the Departments of Public Health & Primary Care, MRC Biostatistics Unit and MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge, bringing together a multi-disciplinary partnership of academics and public health professionals.
The Bradford Hill seminar programme of internationally recognised speakers covers topics of broad interest to our public health research community. It aims to transcend as well as connect the activities of our individual partners.
All are welcome at our Bradford Hill seminars.
The webinar will be recorded.