PRESS RELEASE Tuesday 11 October 2016
Electronic Frailty Index wins prestigious healthcare IT innovation award
The Yorkshire & Humber Academic Health Science Network’s (AHSN) Improvement Academy is delighted to announce that the electronic frailty index (eFI) has won the Healthcare IT Product Innovation category at the EHI Live 2016 Awards.
The eFI was developed in a collaborative partnership between the University of Leeds, TPP, the University of Bradford, the University of Birmingham and Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. The work was funded by the National Institute for Health Research Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care, Yorkshire and Humber (NIHR CLAHRC YH).
The Yorkshire & Humber AHSN’s Improvement Academy supported the roll out of the eFI through its Healthy Ageing Collaborative. As a result of this work, the system has now been implemented by GPs and Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) across the country. The eFI is recommended for use to identify people at risk of frailty within the recently published NICE Multimorbidity guideline.
The eFI helps primary care providers to identify older people with frailty and who face an increased risk of care home admission, hospitalisation and mortality by using information within a patient’s electronic health record.
Examples of the eFI in action include:
- Proactive falls prevention interventions for people with moderate frailty (NHS Leeds South & East CCG)
- Adding people with severe frailty to practice palliative/Gold Standards Framework registers and offering advance care planning interventions (NHS Airedale, Wharfedale and Craven CCG)
- Offering self-management support to people with mild frailty (NHS Bradford Districts CCG)
- Medication reviews for people with severe frailty and care home residents (NHS Vale of York CCG)
- Adding people with severe frailty to a GP practice top two per cent of patients at risk of avoidable unplanned admissions register (NHS West Lincolnshire CCG)
- Nurse-led frailty assessments for people with mild, moderate and severe frailty (NHS Hambleton, Richmondshire & Whitby CCG)
- Identifying patients with moderate and severe frailty for geriatrician led Frailty Clinics or comprehensive geriatric assessment clinics (NHS South Devon & Torbay CCG)
Sarah De Biase, the Healthy Ageing Collaborative Programme Manager, said: “We are delighted to win this award. Development and implementation of the eFI has been a real team effort involving academics, clinicians and industry partners working together to deliver a tool that allows people at risk of frailty to be identified using routinely available data without the need for an additional clinical assessment.
“GPs and CCGs are using the eFI to improve the quality of care for people with frailty through better targeting of evidence-based interventions, improved planning of health services utilisation and the development of more appropriate, proactive care pathways.”
Andy Clegg from the Academic Unit of Elderly Care and Rehabilitation, University of Leeds, who led the eFI development and validation said: “The EHI awards are highly prestigious and recognise exemplary contributions to healthcare IT so our success is testament to the hard work and dedication of our collaborative team, including patient involvement and oversight throughout.
“Our work exemplifies the AHSN mission and demonstrates what is possible through the creation of a strong, purposeful partnership between patients, health services, industry and academia.”
In July this year, the Yorkshire & Humber Academic Health Science Network led a successful bid to retain international recognition for the region’s active and health ageing initiatives.
Experts from across Europe awarded Yorkshire & Humber ‘Reference Site’ status and a three-star rating for the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing. The roll out of the eFI was one of three initiatives highlighted in the successful bid.
For more information about the eFI please click here: http://www.improvementacademy.org/improving-quality/healthy-ageing.html
ENDS
Note to editors:
The Yorkshire and Humber AHSN is one of 15 innovative health networks set up by NHS England. Our aims are:
- to create and harness strong, purposeful partnerships between patients, health services, industry and academia in the healthcare sector
- to create significant improvements in the health of the population by reducing variability and improving experiences of the healthcare system
- to ensure the development of new innovative products and services, which have the potential to transform lives and become part of routine clinical practice
- to stimulate economic growth for the Yorkshire and Humber region, nationally and internationally supporting inward investment projects for health sector businesses.
Notes for editors
The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) is funded by the Department of Health to improve the health and wealth of the nation through research. The NIHR is the research arm of the NHS. Since its establishment in April 2006, the NIHR has transformed research in the NHS. It has increased the volume of applied health research for the benefit of patients and the public, driven faster translation of basic science discoveries into tangible benefits for patients and the economy, and developed and supported the people who conduct and contribute to applied health research. The NIHR plays a key role in the Government’s strategy for economic growth, attracting investment by the life-sciences industries through its world-class infrastructure for health research. Together, the NIHR people, programmes, centres of excellence and systems represent the most integrated health research system in the world. For further information, visit the NIHR website (www.nihr.ac.uk).
NIHR CLAHRC Yorkshire and Humber 