New concepts in screening.
Year: 2004
Type: article
Abstract: ALTHOUGH screening is often delivered by clinicians, screening programmes are public health services that need to be managed at the level of a large population to monitor quality effectively. In the United Kingdom (UK) this is carried out by the National Screening Committee. The first task of the National Screening Committee is to use research evidence to identify programmes that do more good than harm. The second is to make policy recommendations about those programmes that will do more good than harm at reasonable cost, focusing on opportunity cost; that is, the professional time involved, as well as the financial cost. When it has been decided to introduce screening, using criteria based on the Wilson and Jungner WHO criteria, 1 care has to be taken to ensure that the programme is set up in a way that will minimise harm and maximise benefit. In policy making the evidence for screening is often limited because of the rarity of the conditions being screened for, which minimises the contribution that the randomised controlled trial can make, but emphasises the need for a systematic review of the evidence.
Source: Europe PMC (PubMed Central)
Author: J A Muir Gray
Language: English
Subfield: Oncology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1869147810