Read article History of the site
CancerHelp UK is now the patient information website of Cancer Research UK. CancerHelp UK was founded in Birmingham in 1995, by Nick James and the late Sally Tweddle.
Nick is a cancer specialist at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham and Professor of Oncology at the University of Birmingham Institute for Cancer Studies. Sally was an educationalist with an interest in literacy. Before founding CancerHelp UK, she worked with the National Council for Educational Technology in Coventry. Her husband's cancer and their search for cancer information on the Internet inspired the setting up of CancerHelp UK, with its aim of accessible, comprehensive and easily readable information. Tragically Sally herself died from cancer in December 1999. Her obituary is printed in full on the site.
The management team from 1995-2000 also included David Davies and Peter Riding. David is the creator of the University of Birmingham's Medweb site and is a senior lecturer at the University developing and researching the Web as a medium for learning. Peter was joint founder and first project director of the BBC Networking Club, a forerunner to BBC Online. He now runs his own company, Webserve, which offers a range of services, related to the World Wide Web.
CancerHelp UK was originally hosted on the Medical School server at the University of Birmingham where it remained until the recent re-launch. The original site was one of the first comprehensive cancer sites based in the UK. It has grown steadily since its formal launch in February 1996. The site was originally funded from a variety of sources including the NHS, CRC, educational grants from pharmaceutical companies, donations from individuals, and the cancer centre at the Queen Elizabeth and Nuffield Hospitals, Birmingham.
The management of the site passed to The Cancer Research Campaign in 2000. The redesigned site and new cancer trials database was formally launched 14 November 2000.
In February 2002, The Cancer Research Campaign and the Imperial Cancer Research Fund merged to form Cancer Research UK, who now own and fully fund the site.
In October 2009, the site was relaunched following another redesign. This was necessary to update the look and feel of the site, and to accommodate the rapid growth in content that has taken place over the past few years. New services were launched, including summaries of all cancer type pages (our quick guides), a question and answer search, and expansion of the clinical trials database to include closed trials and trials with results.
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