PED4PED – People with Epilepsy sharing Data for care with Paramedics and the Emergency Department

This project is funded by the UK Research and Innovation’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF).

 

 

Overview

Led by the University of Liverpool, this project aims to improve outcomes for patients with epilepsy and reduce unnecessary admissions to A&E by connecting data from GPs, hospitals and ambulance services and making it available to paramedics and emergency department staff when they are called out to patients requiring urgent care.

The Challenge

Epilepsy is one of many chronic diseases that can have acute exacerbations requiring urgent care.

When an ambulance is called for someone who has had a seizure, paramedics do not have access to information that can inform acute management – such as diagnosis, usual seizure type, rescue medication protocol, place of safety or next of kin.

As a result many patients are taken to the emergency department (ED) unnecessarily. Similarly, staff in the ED do not have access to this information, resulting in unnecessary admissions, investigations and potential treatment errors.

The Solution

The University of Liverpool is working with NHS partners including paramedics, patients, neurologists and ED representatives to identify a core dataset that should be available to paramedics and ED staff.

Core data items are held in the Neurology Electronic Patient Record (diagnosis and management), primary care (prescribing), ED (previous attendances) and ambulance (999 calls).

Cheshire and Merseyside Sustainability and Transformation Partnership (STP) has created a health information exchange linking the NHS partners, and along with Lancashire and South Cumbria STP, has been awarded second wave Local Health and Care Record Exemplars (LHCRE) funding.

They will continue to build on the e-Xchange, working with Forcare, to make core data available to paramedics and ED staff, to improve outcomes for patients and the health service.

This exemplar addresses a key recommendation of The NHS Improvement Carter report (2018) that ambulance services should take action to improve accessibility to and use of patient information on the frontline.

It will support the development of processes that will help provide proactive management of health and chronic conditions and will capture lessons learned from using qualitative research methods.

Impact and Outcomes

The provision of vital information to frontline healthcare professionals (paramedics and ED staff) is expected to facilitate change in practice, resulting in fewer conveyances and admissions and more efficient care.

Patients will receive better and more appropriate care with less risk of unnecessary interventions and inappropriate management decisions, and a greater likelihood of having care directed from specialist services.

The informatics industry will also benefit from the programme which will have a substantial impact on the development and rollout of similar IT infrastructure projects that involve sharing of information across NHS structures.

The evaluation of this exemplar will provide evidence as to what worked well and will serve to inform future projects.

This new form of digital service also has considerable market potential as its proactive methodologies could be applied to a range of long-term conditions (for example COPD or frailty) which contribute to high levels of unplanned emergency admissions.

Partners

Contact

Professor Tony Marson, Professor of Neurology, University of Liverpool
Telephone: 0151 794 9709