We are proud to highlight a pioneering initiative seeking to improve heart failure care across Wales. Led by Swansea University’s Dr Emma Rees and Dr Aimee Drane, an ambitious programme supported by a one-year NHIR grant, aims to bring together healthcare professionals, researchers, patients and policymakers to establish a consensus on best practices and identify cross-Wales opportunities for collaborative research and innovation.
This research development programme will assess the current landscape of heart failure care across Wales. By understanding existing practices, evaluating successful interventions, and identifying new opportunities for innovation and research, the initiative will improve inter-disciplinary capacity and capability in research and innovation, prioritizing areas of work that will transform patient care in Wales.
A key aspect of the project is stakeholder engagement, and all health boards across Wales will be invited to share insights into their ongoing heart failure care initiatives in a “sandpit” event. This will provide a comprehensive overview of current strategies, successes and challenges, and areas in need of further development. Leading services from England will also be invited to contribute best practices and current research, offering valuable insights into innovative approaches to patient care across the border.
Following initial expert discussion, the research team will collaborate with the Swansea Trials Unit to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis. This will build a robust evidence-base of the effectiveness of current heart failure interventions and identify gaps ripe for research in Wales.
One crucial element of the project involves enriching routinely collected healthcare data within the SAIL databank. Currently, researchers can examine the number of heart scans performed for suspected heart failure, but there is insufficient data to examine the type or severity of heart failure. This limits the accuracy of population level heart failure research. To overcome this issue, the group are testing whether it is possible to extract and link heart scan measurement data from Swansea Bay University Health Board with other healthcare data in the SAIL Databank. This work involves close partnership with Dr Benjamin Dicken, Cardiologist at SBUHB, and Dr Libby Ellins, Data Science lead for the National Cardiovascular Research Network. The researchers aim to develop a new model for data extraction and linkage that could significantly enhance heart failure research in Wales and beyond.
At the end of the one-year programme, the team will publish a consensus document outlining best practices and research priorities for heart failure care in Wales. This document will serve as the foundation for future large-scale funding applications to drive collaborative research and innovation across Wales.
By fostering collaboration between universities, health boards, and community healthcare providers, this initiative aligns with our mission to drive impactful healthcare innovations that enhance patient outcomes.