This article was first published on healthandcare.scot

NHS Scotland has signed an agreement with university and industry partners to work together on large scale programmes to help patients with chronic conditions like heart and respiratory conditions, and to drive more clinical research.

NHS Golden Jubilee’s national Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD), NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde, University of Glasgow, AstraZeneca UK and Lenus Health have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to review clinical practice to improve patient outcomes and reduce waiting times.

Initially, the collaborative work will focus on testing new patient pathways and digital technologies for quicker diagnosis and treatment – and ensuring Scotland can run more large-scale clinical trials and research studies.

There will be a programme to collect evidence to assess the effectiveness of these new clinical management pathways, with the CfSD then scaling up successful pathways across NHS Scotland.

Professor Jann Gardner, Chief Executive of NHS Golden Jubilee, says the agreement supports the CfSD’s role in delivering innovation:

“The national Centre for Sustainable Delivery at NHS Golden Jubilee has been set up specifically to renew and transform healthcare services across NHS Scotland and is uniquely positioned to deliver transformation programmes at scale through the Accelerated National Innovation Adoption pathway.

“This collaboration provides opportunities to improve patient care, employ new technologies and medicines, while addressing the impact of health inequalities and social barriers to provide a more sustainable future healthcare system.”

The first project being considered by the partners for rollout across NHS Scotland is the Optimised Pathway for Early Identification of Heart Failure in the Community (OPERA).

OPERA's digital patient pathway was trialled at the temporary NHS Louisa Jordan hospital in Glasgow during the covid-19 pandemic, where patients attended a single clinic appointment to undergo a bank of tests including electrocardiogram (heart tracing), echocardiogram (an ultrasound heart scan) and blood-based biomarkers.

During the pilot, the waiting list for heart failure diagnostic tests was reduced from over 12 months to just six weeks.

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde’s Director of Research and Innovation, Professor Julie Brittenden, says Scotland’s recovery from the pandemic has seen a "growth in the number of transformative studies" involving novel medicines, devices, digitally-enabled technologies and artificial intelligence:

“This collaboration further adds to the opportunity to undertake high quality research and innovation projects such as OPERA, which will directly impact on and improve patient-centred care.”  

Tom Keith-Roach, President, AstraZeneca UK, says the agreement will help scale up good ideas across the whole of Scotland:

“Building on the success of project OPERA this MoU represents our commitment to work with NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde, the University of Glasgow, the Centre for Sustainable Delivery and Lenus Health to improve and integrate chronic disease pathways, reduce waiting times and address healthcare inequality.

“Together, under this agreement we will establish Scotland as an engine for care model innovation, for generating practice changing evidence, and for scaling new care models to improve outcomes for patients.”

University of Glasgow Vice Principal and Head of the College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences, Professor Iain McInnes, says the agreement also strengthens the “vital triple helix partnership” between research, industry and the NHS, adding:

“Using the world-changing research carried out at the University of Glasgow, we will work together with AstraZeneca and the NHS in Scotland with the aim to deliver more high calibre trials and ultimately improve patient care.”

Lenus Health is the digital partner.  Chief Executive Paul McGinness says digital and data innovation will be central to scaling up new pathways to benefit more patients sooner:

“Through our work supporting patients to manage long-term conditions using virtual care and AI platforms, we have seen first-hand how it can reduce waiting lists and prevent readmissions.

“By joining up data across clinical pathways and giving patients tools to engage with their health services, providers can significantly improve outcomes and enable more personalised healthcare.”

He adds that by committing to the Scottish digital health and AI “ecosystem”, the local economy may also benefit from investment in the technology sector, potentially generating more jobs.

Two further projects are also being considered for scaling up, focused on heart and lung disease prevention: Prevention of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) Lung Attacks by eaRly Intervention Strategies (POLARIS); and Screening for earlY heart failure diagnosis and Management in Primary care or at HOme using natriuretic peptides and echocardiography (SYMPHONY) – a 5-country trial with a Scottish arm called TARTAN-HF.