NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde

Breastmilk can promote equitable child health and save healthcare costs by reducing childhood illnesses and healthcare utilization in the early years, according to a new study. Breastmilk can promote equitable child health and save healthcare costs by reducing childhood illnesses and healthcare utilization in the early years, according to a new study published this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Tomi Ajetunmobi of the Glasgow Centre for Population Health, Scotland, and colleagues. Breastfeeding has previously been found to promote development and prevent disease among infants. In Scotland -- as well as other developed countries -- low rates of breastfeeding in more economically deprived areas are thought to contribute to inequalities in early childhood health. However, government policies to promote child health have made little progress and more evidence on the effectiveness of interventions may be needed. In the new study, researchers used administrative datasets on 502,948 babies born in Scotland between 1997 and 2009. Data were available on whether or not infants were breastfed during the first 6-8 weeks, the occurrence of ten common childhood conditions from birth to 27 months, and the details of hospital admissions, primary care consultations and prescriptions. Among all infants included in the study, 27% were exclusively breastfed, 9% mixed fed and 64% formula fed during the first 6-8 weeks of life. The rates of exclusively breastfed infants ranged from 45% in the least deprived areas to 13% in the most deprived areas. The researchers found that, within each quintile of deprivation, exclusively breastfed infants used fewer healthcare services and incurred lower costs compared to infants fed any formula milk. On average, breastfed infants had lower average costs of hospital care per admission (£42) compared to formula-fed infants (£79) in the first six months of life and fewer GP consultations (1.72, 95% CI: 1.66 -- 1.79) than formula-fed infants (1.92 95% CI: 1.88 -- 1.94). At least £10 million of healthcare costs could have been avoided if all formula-fed infants had instead been exclusively breastfed for the first 6-8 weeks of life, the researchers calculated. The authors conclude that breastfeeding has a significant health and economic benefit and that increasing breastfeeding rates in the most deprived areas could contribute to the narrowing of inequalities in the early years.

Sidekick Health and Lilly collaborate to support breast cancer patients Digital therapeutics (DTx) startup Sidekick Health has announced an integrated solution in conjunction with pharma firm Eli Lilly and Company for patients with breast cancer. Through Sidekick’s platform, patients will be given access to a tailored digital treatment plan to promote behaviour modification and overcome barriers to change. Patients will also be able to access educational content on living with cancer. The integrated DTx offering will be initially rolled out in Germany from July. Dr Tryggvi Thorgeirsson, CEO and cofounder, Sidekick, said: “At Sidekick, it is our goal to empower patients to take real steps toward better managing their disease and alleviating the negative side effects of treatment.” Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust launches ‘hospital without walls’ Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust has launched an interactive and immersive digital platform to create a “hospital without walls” for families, children, young people and clinicians to manage, treat, educate and coordinate delivery of their healthcare. The AlderHey@nywhere™ platform was developed by Alder Hey Innovation in collaboration with Microsoft and healthtech firm Mindwave as a solution to addressing the finite capacity of hospital and community resources. Managing director, Alder Hey Innovation, Claire Liddy, said: “What we want to do is to shift to a more preventative model of care that is individualised and tailored and that empowers children and young people to take ownership of their healthcare and treatment.” Nordic nurse-tech pioneer to launch in the UK Norway’s VAR Healthcare, a provider of online knowledge and decision support systems for frontline staff across Scandinavia, is to launch in the UK. The company is commencing a pilot scheme with staff at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust with the support of the Innovation Pop Up. VAR Healthcare provides nurses and healthcare professionals with a digital tool to quickly access details of hundreds of clinical procedures to support safe and continuous patient care. Ann Kristin Rotegård PhD, managing director, VAR Healthcaresaid: “We have ambitions to spread out further and share best practice to support all nurses so they can give the best possible patient care.” Swedish firm HN rolls out AI population health tool to NHS An artificial intelligence (AI) tool created by Swedish scale-up HN has proved it can identify 83% of people who would otherwise need unplanned hospital care months in advance. The tool, called HN Predict, was tested on NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde’s existing patient data and is being implemented in integrated care systems in Staffordshire, North Yorkshire, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland. In a clinical trial, published in the British Journal of General Practice, one out of four referrals to hospitals identified by the AI-tool could be prevented by supporting these high-risk patients with nurse-led, virtual ward support. Dr Joachim Werr, founder and executive chair, HN, said: “HN Predict works by applying machine learning to routinely collected healthcare data, turning existing information into a powerful source for preventive healthcare.​” Ibex obtains CE Mark for AI-powered gastric cancer detection solution Israel-based startup Ibex Medical Analytics has announced a CE mark for Galen Gastric, a diagnostics solution that supports pathologists in the detection of various types of gastric cancer. The CE mark follows results from a blinded, multi-site clinical study at Medipath pathology network in France and Maccabi Healthcare Services health network in Israel. Galen Gastric demonstrated very high accuracy in detecting various types of gastric cancer, as well as Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori - a common gastric bacterial infection and a precursor for cancer), neuroendocrine lesions, dysplasia, adenoma and additional pathologies. Judith Sandbank, MD, director of the pathology institute at Maccabi Healthcare Services, said: “We have already started to use Galen Gastric in Maccabi and it helped us improve the quality of cancer diagnosis and patient care.”

Pharma giant Novartis Pharmaceuticals UK and UK provider of digital healthcare solutions, Cievert has announced a digital innovation partnership. The collaboration will support patient care in rheumatology and dermatology by capturing patient-reported data. The partnership was created via the Novartis BIOME, a project which encourages impactful collaboration in science tech, with a selection procedure involving NHS clinicians and innovation leads. Novartis and Cievert are working closely with the NHS to launch pilot programmes at various sites across the UK. WHY IT MATTERS The platform enables patient-reported outcomes and disease activity measures to be fed into the system, giving patients the opportunity to be more involved in their care. Through this, patients are encouraged to report symptoms and progress from home, which can be remotely reviewed by clinical teams. The digital platform aims to support patients, healthcare professionals and the NHS in three areas: Capturing patient digital health records in one single platform, which could reduce misalignment among healthcare teams, saving clinicians valuable time going between multiple systems and ultimately resulting in more timely management of care. Helping coordinate and prioritise appointments based on patient need rather than routinely scheduled reviews, which could help reduce waiting lists and hospital visits. Collecting real-time patient data in the community and helping patients to take more control over their health and care. THE LARGER CONTEXT Several major NHS leadership shifts have been recently announced as both NHS England and Improvement (NHSE/I) and NHS Digital are preparing for a change as the health service seeks to usher in the new era of healthcare innovation post-pandemic. In related news, an initial investment of €24 million has been made by Sanofi, Capgemini, Generali and Orange to create a platform that accelerates the development of digital healthcare solutions in Europe. The project aims to bring together scientific and technological expertise across the region and will be operational from June 2021. ON THE RECORD Dr Sandeep Bawa, consultant rheumatologist, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said: “In the current climate, the remote management of chronic disease is regularly navigated without supporting information from the patient regarding their condition. This creates a gap in our ability to understand the full picture of disease activity and progression in the outpatient setting. “A remote monitoring solution that allows us to assess a patient’s disease activity in the community will allow us to manage a patient’s care more effectively, by identifying those in need of early clinical review from those who may require less frequent review. Now more than ever, digital tools have the potential to transform care for our patients and help streamline processes in the NHS by supporting the transition to a needs-based model of care, whilst maintaining best practice.” Chris Kennelly, Cievert CEO and former NHS Clinician, said: “In five years’ time we expect the existing clinical model of care to look markedly different. There is a unique opportunity to accelerate digital reform of the NHS after COVID-19, which has marked a shift in digital and remote healthcare access. Our partnership with Novartis is a big step in the right direction and we are looking forward to bringing our digital-first solution to HCPs and patients in the UK.”