MSPs will tonight (Tuesday 14 May 2019) hear from University of Glasgow researchers how patients with life-threatening heart problems could benefit from a new approach to tracking treatments and outcomes throughout their care.

An e-Registry of electronic health records has already helped Cardiologists bring together six care pathways for heart attack patients in the NHS. The e-Registry tracks the treatment and outcomes of heart attack patients, providing new insights into their care.

Over one year, the e-Registry gathered and linked anonymised data for 2,500 ‘patient events’ for people with confirmed or suspected heart attacks and angina episodes at seven acute hospitals across NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde and the specialist cardiothoracic intervention centre at the Golden Jubilee National Hospital.

Clinical lead for the programme, Professor Colin Berry of the University of Glasgow and Research Director at the Golden Jubilee National Hospital, says the e-Registry has the potential to improve the quality of care for people who have heart attacks across Scotland:

“The e-Registry has allowed us to analyse hospitalisations for angina and heart attacks across the complex healthcare system of the Greater Glasgow and Clyde area. The e-Registry creates a unique, near real-time tool to show the pathways and outcomes for thousands of patients.

“Armed with that information, changes have already been made to how we prioritise people with certain forms of high risk heart attack, diverting their ambulances directly to the specialist cardiology service at the Golden Jubilee National Hospital instead of a local Emergency Department.

“I believe that the system we have developed has the potential to inform further change in how we treat and prevent heart attacks. Having shown what can be done by linking existing health data across our region, I hope that the rest of Scotland will consider adopting a similar approach.”

Based on the e-Registry data, a pathway for high risk NSTEMI heart attack patients led by the Golden Jubilee National Hospital has been successfully implemented with the e-Registry system providing evidence of benefits to patients and the NHS. More than 600 patients judged to need urgent treatment have already been diverted directly to the regional and national heart specialist centre at the Golden Jubilee. The new pathway allowed many of them to be discharged home sooner, reducing their stay in hospital and saving approximately £1.1 million to NHSScotland .

The ACS e-Registry was developed through a joint working programme that brought together NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, the Golden Jubilee National Hospital, the University of Glasgow, the Scottish Ambulance Service and AstraZeneca UK Limited. The work was also enabled by collaborative innovation funding from The Data Lab.

---

Enquiries: ali.howard@glasgow.ac.uk orelizabeth.mcmeekin@glasgow.ac.uk / 0141 330 6557 or 0141 330 4831

First published: 14 May 2019