Delivered the largest UK clinical cancer trial reaching 50K people
Role
Staff Product Designer
Timeline
2018
Industry
Health Care, B2B
Product
Web App
50,000
Participants in the study
Clinical study
3 orgs
Multi-stakeholder initiative
Overview
GRAIL is a health-tech company on a mission to transform cancer outcomes through early detection, using high-intensity sequencing and advanced data science. In partnership with University College London (UCL) and University College London Hospital (UCLH), I led design for a multi-year clinical trial involving 50,000 adults aged 50–70—one of the most ambitious early cancer screening studies of its kind.
As Senior Product Designer, I shaped the end-to-end participant and clinical experience, enabling safe, ethical, scalable delivery of screenings over the course of three years.
Problem
Designing for a complex clinical environment required balancing scientific rigour with usability and scale. The system needed to support a wide range of roles—nurses, radiologists, receptionists, administrators, and researchers—each with different workflows and responsibilities.
Key challenges included:
Designing for strict regulatory and ethical constraints
Integrating with NHS clinical systems for secure data exchange
Ensuring an intuitive experience for older adults in the study
Creating a workflow model that could scale reliably across three years of daily appointments
Aligning clinical, operational, and research needs into one service
This required designing not only the product, but the service that wrapped around it.
Result
The study continues today and has already saved lives through early detection, including patients like Bridget, whose cancer was found early because of this screening programme.
Key outcomes:
Operational end-to-end service spanning multiple clinical roles
Modelled real-world capacity over a three-year timeline
Integrated with NHS infrastructure
Smooth adoption by nurses, radiologists, and administrative teams
Empowered GRAIL with tools and processes to sustain long-term
“The whole experience has been like an express train and the consultants have been absolutely brilliant!”
Sources: BBC, SUMMIT study
