Ovarian cancer loyalty card data sharing study

To participate in the study click here

What is the research project called?

“Ovarian cancer and shopping for healthcare products: using transactional data to investigate the pathway to diagnosis of ovarian cancer”

Who is carrying out the research?​
Elizabeth Dolan, PhD Candidate, University of Nottingham
Dr James Goulding, Associate Professor, University of Nottingham (Supervisor)

What is the research about?

This study is to investigate ovarian cancer and changes in shopping behaviour before diagnosis.

We want to study the association self-medication with healthcare products may have with a woman with ovarian cancer’s time to diagnosis, following interaction with the healthcare system where women may have had a misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis.

Our previous survey study showed that the women with ovarian cancer who self-medicated were seven times more likely to wait longer than a year for an accurate diagnosis, if their decision to self-medicate was made after an interaction with the healthcare system rather than independently. An association was found between shopping patterns (shopping for longer and buying more product types) and a women’s doctor thinking their health problems were due to a condition but not ovarian cancer. Read the preprint of our paper here or watch the webinar below to find out more.

An analysis of loyalty card data could provide evidence to support and enhance the women’s self-reported experiences from our survey study. We will use the Tesco Clubcard data to try to establish how long women are waiting to see if healthcare products work, and investigate the time delays to diagnosis purchasing healthcare products may cause. This will be possible due to the timestamps generated when a customer purchases an item. We will also look for the shopping patterns of misdiagnosed women with ovarian cancer, discovered from our survey.

What groups of people have been asked to take part, and why?

Two groups of people have been asked to take part to compare shopping habits:

All women with a diagnosis of ovarian cancer in the last ten years with a Tesco Clubcard.
Women without a diagnosis of ovarian cancer in the last ten years with a Tesco Clubcard.

What will research participants be asked to do?

Share your Tesco Clubcard data with us by using Tesco’s new website data sharing function (which makes it quick and easy to do) and to answer some survey questions.

Figure summarising data flow in linking Loyalty Card data to survey data

 

 

Support and information to anyone affected by ovarian cancer

Due to the sensitive nature of the topic covered by the study there is the risk you may find participating in it upsetting. Ovacome, who are assisting us with this study, offer support for anyone affected by ovarian cancer. You can contact them via:

0800 008 7054 or 07503682311 (open 10am-5pm Monday-Friday) Chat with them online https://www.ovacome.org.uk Or email support@ovacome.org.uk