England has its first Men’s Health Strategy – but what does it mean for men with prostate cancer?

On International Men’s Day 2025, the Government published its first ever Men’s Health Strategy for England. We're ready for a dedicated strategy like this, to focus health interventions on men’s specific needs and reduce the barriers that make it harder for men to access support with their health. 

With colleagues in our Data and Evidence team, we submitted a response to the Government’s call for evidence – and following the strategy’s publication, we’re pleased to see that priorities for prostate cancer have been included. 

We’re especially delighted to see references to our TRANSFORM trial, which we and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) are funding with the backing of the Government.   

Now it’s essential that the NHS in England takes steps to make sure the priorities outlined in the strategy are embedded safely and effectively. 

The Men’s Health Strategy sets out the Government's ambitions to support men on active monitoring pathways – such as active surveillance and post-treatment follow-up – enabling them to order and complete PSA tests at home.  

This can be particularly helpful to patients who are living in rural areas or from low-income households, for whom travelling into hospital can be a barrier to accessing healthcare. It could help those in employment who may have difficulty finding time to attend appointments too. And remote care also frees up vital clinic capacity, which can be redirected to areas of greater need.   

We welcome the overarching ambition to empower men to manage their condition remotely where possible. This supports the three ‘shifts’ set out in the Government’s 10 Year Health Plan for England – ‘hospital to community’, ‘analogue to digital’ and ‘sickness to prevention’.  

However, it’s unclear at this stage how this will work. For example, will monitoring be carried out by hospitals, or will there also be a role for primary care and neighbourhood health services? 

We often hear about the challenges of sharing patient information across different parts of the NHS – and if monitoring is done remotely, this will require collaboration between men, their GP and their urology teams. For this to work seamlessly, there must be interoperability between IT systems – so that changes in a patient’s status are immediately flagged to teams and the necessary follow-up investigations are booked.  

Failsafe systems must also be in place to make sure men’s medical information is kept secure. In our recent active surveillance report, we found that 27.9% of NHS hospitals had flagged a lack of failsafe systems as a barrier to implementing active surveillance. So it’s vital that the Government funds the digital infrastructure that’s needed to enable secure data sharing across the NHS and in the NHS App. 

For men, it’s important that they receive education and feel empowered to use the tests safely and accurately at home. They should be signposted to further information and advice, but also given the tools to monitor their PSA levels themselves, should they choose to.  

We know anecdotally that NHS England is already funding pilots in a number of NHS trusts, which are looking at digital solutions to help patients manage their prostate cancer care via the NHS App. We look forward to seeing the results of these pilots, and how successful initiatives could be scaled up to reach more men.  

We also know men can become anxious when it comes to testing and waiting for results. This must be avoided, so that men aren’t seeing their test results on apps in isolation, without speaking to their clinicians about what their results mean.

The strategy commits to increasing remote monitoring for men with prostate cancer, following treatment. With little detail, this could take several forms. So it will be interesting to see whether the Government examines innovations that can be carried out at home – like trials exploring the self-removal of urinary catheters for men who’ve had a Robotic Assisted Radical Prostatectomy (RARP).  

We’ve been working with clinicians at three NHS Foundation Trusts –Mid and South Essex, Royal Surrey and University College London Hospitals – to see if patients can be trained to safely remove their own urinary catheters at home. Carrying out this procedure at home means patients don’t need to travel to hospital – which saves time and reduces costs, while helping them feel more comfortable in a familiar environment.  

Remote monitoring must also include holistic support. Signposting to organisations, like us, who provide information on managing or reducing the side effects of treatment and peer-to-peer support, can help men in their recovery at home. Formalising referral pathways and directly referring patients to organisations would also mean that support is more readily available for men when they need it. 

The potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in prostate cancer diagnosis, treatment and care is well understood – and interest in AI is growing, particularly around its use in streamlining pathways and supporting accurate diagnosis.  

We’d be pleased to work with the Government and the NHS to ensure that concerns around data security and bias, especially for Black men, are addressed before a wider roll-out.