Health Innovation Manchester and pharmaceutical industry company GSK are collaborating on a Joint Working project, to optimise care for people living with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) in Greater Manchester.

The project is helping to identify those who may benefit from a review of their lung health and support the ongoing treatment guidance and management of their COPD, based on current best clinical practice.

Through the LungHealth software a consistent and algorithm-guided consultation is carried out, in line with NICE guidelines, used to deliver both remote and face-to-face patient reviews.

Practices involved will be provided with a twelve-month licence of this software, with the opportunity to receive training as part of the service delivery on both the GOLD report for COPD, and the use of the LungHealth software package.

The service aims to provide respiratory nurse specialist resource, to work with the practice to conduct a full review for a proportion of patients on the COPD register to ensure accurate diagnosis and treatment.

In achieving a high standard of COPD management and diagnosis, this work will potentially help to:

• Standardise patient care in line with locality guidelines to ensure that all patients receive guideline level care.
• Reduce practice burden of long-term condition management through temporary provision of nurse resource.
• Lead to sustained improvement in quality of primary care COPD management by driving guideline awareness through structured education at practice level for those healthcare professionals with a responsibility to review patients with COPD.
• Improve COPD outcomes and reduce non-elective hospital admissions through optimisation of COPD management.
• Leave a legacy of care by mentoring practice staff with the responsibility of reviewing patients on the LungHealth COPD software.

This work with GSK is also helping to support primary care in prioritising patients for review, and in addressing a focus area of the NHS England Core20PLUS5 populations, to reduce healthcare inequalities.

There are five clinical areas of focus which require accelerated improvement, with this project focussing on area three in helping to target patients/practices with inequalities in COPD.

Dr Shelley Grumbridge, GP and Primary Care Clinical & Digital Lead, at Health Innovation Manchester, said: “Using the experience and resource available through GSK and National Services for Health Improvement (NSHI) to support our NHS workforce, this work in partnership can only benefit the pathway and potentially improve patient outcomes. By listening to front line workers and patients, we can help to remove barriers to Gold Standard COPD care using the LungHealth platform.”

This project is a Joint Working arrangement between GSK UK Limited and Health Innovation Manchester and its member practices. The ABPI code of practice prohibits switch services paid for or facilitated directly or indirectly by a pharmaceutical company whereby a patient’s medicine is simply changed to another. At no stage will GSK have access to any identifiable patient data. GSK shall not influence prescribing decisions.

NP-GB-CPU-WCNT-230001 May 2023