New digital tools to transform the care pathway for patients with heart failure and monitor residents in care homes are being accelerated in to use in Greater Manchester.

Across the country health and care teams have set up new ways to support people at home during the COVID-19 outbreak, many using digital tools to excellent effect, at an impressive pace.

NHSX is supporting this work through the allocation of additional funding to support regional teams to undertake scaling at pace between September 2020 and March 2021.

The aim is to support the delivery of modern, responsive health and care services that will empower people to monitor their own health and wellbeing; manage long term conditions; and receive care in their own homes when it is sensible and safe to do so.

Health Innovation Manchester is supporting the deployment of two innovations as part of this work.

Around 27,000 people live with heart failure in Greater Manchester, costing the health and care system almost £800 million each year. If heart failure related problems were detected and treated earlier, improved patient outcomes and reduce treatment costs could be achieved.

This project will move care planning in heart failure from variable, ad-hoc paper-based plans, to implementing a digitised and standardised heart failure care plan across care settings via the GM Care Record, enhanced by an interoperable patient facing app. This will support HF patients to be managed more effectively within the community, while also empowering patients to take greater control and be more informed about their condition.

Find out more about the project

Health and care professionals from Greater Manchester (overseen by Health Innovation Manchester) have worked with industry partner Safe Steps to develop a UK-first digital innovation that is helping care homes to track COVID-19 and coordinate care with GP practices, social care and hospitals to optimally support vulnerable residents.

The tool currently allows care homes staff to input information about a resident’s COVID-19 related symptoms into a tracker, which can be shared directly with the resident’s GP and NHS community response team to ensure that a swift assessment and response can be put in place.

The tool will now be enhanced as part of the expansion from care homes into domiciliary settings. It will include:

• Direct support for GM Virtual Wards (an adapted version of tracker to monitor patients at home who will be cared for in a virtual ward).
• The nationally recognised RESTORE2 signs of deterioration.
• The national six steps end of life care pathway.
• A flu symptom and outbreak tracker to support winter resilience.

The project will also support the COVID Oximetry@home work, currently being undertaken by the Greater Manchester Patient Safety Collaborative, to monitor care home residents through a virtual ward system.

Find out more about the project

It will comprise of four key programmes of work:

• Communities of Practice
• Health Economics and business intelligence
• Communications and Marketing
• Events and networking