As part of this year’s World COPD Day celebrations, Health Innovation Manchester hears from Dr Shelley Grumbridge, Primary Care Clinical & Digital Lead at Health Innovation Manchester, on the project taking place in some Greater Manchester practices to optimise the care pathway for patients living with COPD.

Health Innovation Manchester has partnered with pharmaceutical industry company GSK as part of a Joint Working agreement, to improve the COPD pathway for patients, and has taken steps to identify those who would benefit from a review of their lung health and help support the best ongoing treatment and management of their COPD based on current best practice clinical guidance.

The theme for this year’s awareness day is ‘Your Lungs Your Life’ with the aim of highlighting the importance of lifelong lung health. The campaign focuses on contributing factors to COPD from birth to adulthood and what can be done to promote lifelong lung health, as well as how to protect vulnerable communities.

Dr Grumbridge analyses the challenges that the local health and social care system face since the COVID-19 pandemic, her role as a Primary Care Clinical & Digital Lead, and the patient pathway progress for local COPD patients. She said: “We feel it is really important to ensure that we have accessible and high quality, gold standard services to best support people where they need it across Greater Manchester.

“My role in this work is to provide clinical system leadership and oversight of the project using my experience as a GP in Primary Care and the wider system, along with my knowledge of the digital solutions used in Greater Manchester, and engagement with fellow clinicians, patient groups and project partners.

“Our current work to improve the COPD pathway for patients has seen engagement at key Primary Care meetings gain interest from PCNs across the region. We have some PCN volunteers keen to pilot the work along with PCN communities identified as being able to most benefit from additional support and resources and address health inequalities which we are looking to work with.”

Dr Grumbridge also explains that spirometry has been challenging to access since COVID with new guidance now in place for ventilation for rooms. However, working with GSK can improve access to resource, and vital support. She said: “We are hoping that this project with GSK will also improve access to spirometry using various options to support the needs of our patients and PCNs. Using the experience and resource available through GSK and National Services for Health Improvement (NHSI) to support our NHS workforce, this work in partnership can only benefit the pathway and improve patient outcomes. By listening to front line workers and patient groups, we can help to remove barriers to Gold Standard COPD care through the use of the LungHealth platform.”

For more information on the Joint Working agreement between Health Innovation Manchester and GSK, please click here.*

*GSK COPD Executive Summary PDF – https://www.gsk.com/media/9278/gm-jw-executive-summary.pdf 

More information (links):

• https://www.blf.org.uk/support-for-you/copd
• https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng115
• https://cks.nice.org.uk/topics/chronic-obstructive-pulmonary-disease/
• https://bestpractice.bmj.com/topics/en-gb/7/criteria

NP-GB-CPU-CSTY-220001 November 2022