Shift three: Sickness to prevention

 

Many of our work programmes align to the third of the government’s transformative shifts. Keeping people well not only improves our quality of life and overall population health outcomes, but prevents costly hospital admissions, cuts healthcare spending, and refocuses care away from reactive, crisis-driven interventions to proactive, preventative health solutions.

Our successful PERIPrem programme, for example, is helping to prevent brain injury and mortality ratesamong babies born prematurely, and we are also working with trusts across the West of England to improve care and outcomes for patients receiving non-invasive ventilation.

Through our Polypharmacy and medicines safety programmes, we are making a significant impact on reducing unintended harm from medications, empowering people to be more engaged in shared decision making with their clinicians.

7

innovation projects selected for funding to improve cancer diagnosis

56,000

contacts made with Bristol patients at potential risk of developing CVD

606

patients reached through our support for child/ parent screening for familial hypercholesterolemia (FH)

Cancer Innovation Programme

Challenge

We aim to encourage adoption of innovative care practices and new models of working to benefit patients and the wider cancer workforce.

We want to improve earlier diagnosis of cancer through the accelerated discovery and deployment of innovation in cancer services. This involves understanding and identifying local priorities and matching these with proven solutions that can improve pathways and outcomes.

Approach

In March 2024, we formed a collaboration with the Somerset, Wiltshire, Avon, and Gloucestershire (SWAG) Cancer Alliance and Health Innovation South West.

This partnership has funded a joint Cancer Innovation Programme Manager to engage with teams to understand specific innovation needs in the SWAG geography and help identify proven innovations for spread and promising ones for evaluation.

Result

We have run successful innovation calls and are now funding seven projects with sites across the SWAG geography focused on improving cancer diagnosis.

These projects include evaluation of an artificial intelligence (AI) tool to support prostate MRI reporting and the use of a urine biomarker test for bladder cancer. We are also supporting a case-finding project using the capsule sponge to support earlier diagnosis of oesophageal cancer and its pre-cursor condition, Barrett’s Oesophagus.

The Cancer Alliance is also funding three trusts to build Intelligent Process Automations to streamline administrative processes across the cancer pathway, freeing up staff time for other tasks.

You can find out more about the Cancer Innovation Programme here.

Improving cholesterol management

Challenge

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) causes 25% of all deaths in England. People living in the most deprived areas of the country are more than twice as likely to die before 75 from CVD than people in the least deprived regions.

High cholesterol (also known as lipids disorder) is recognised as a significant risk factor for developing CVD.

Approach

Through the Collaborative Lipid Fund established by NHS England and Novartis Pharmaceuticals, we worked with five primary care networks (PCNs) in Bristol who were identified as requiring additional support. These PCNs were in areas of deprivation known to have poorer health outcomes.

In 2024, we helped GP practices run searches of their patient records to identify people who’d both had a heart attack or stroke and also had high cholesterol, supporting clinicians to manage patients in line with NICE lipid management guidance.

Result

During the project over 56,000 contacts were made with these patients, including text messages, telephone calls and face-to-face appointments. As well as the PCNs developing a better understanding of effective lipid management, the longer-term impacts should include a reduction in CVD events and hospital admissions and an overall improvement in health outcomes and life expectancy.

Find out more about our work to support managing high cholesterol in patients who have had a cardiac event.

The collaborative lipid project really helped our pharmacists and pharmacy technicians focus their efforts on reducing CVD. As a result, not only do we have better patient care and medication compliance but a much greater understanding within our PCN.

Anil Singh Senior PCN Pharmacist

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