NorthWest EHealth honoured in QiC Diabetes Awards

North West EHealth Ltd, the developer of innovative software for analysing health and care data, today announced that it was awarded ‘Highly Commended’ for the ‘Diabetes Collaboration Initiative of the Year’ at the Quality in Care (QiC) Diabetes Awards along with its partners Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust and NIHR CR: Greater Manchester. The QiC Awards, which were announced at Sanofi’s headquarters in Guildford, aim to recognise, reward and share innovative practice demonstrating quality in diabetes management, education and services.

 NWEH and its collaborators were nominated for the award for their ‘Research for the Future: The “Help BEAT Diabetes” Campaign’.  The campaign aims to encourage people across Greater Manchester and surrounding areas with diabetes to take part in research studies. Once patients register their details to give their consent for approach, they can then be contacted about future research opportunities. There is no obligation to participate in any study to which patients are invited. All NHS patient data used by the Help Beat Diabetes team is securely stored, separately from clinical data, on an NHS encrypted database. This method of connecting research teams to patients helps to recruit patients with shorter timelines, fundamentally advancing diabetes research.

Patients can be approached using NWEH’s intelligent FARSITE technology, which has the ability to identify and enrol suitable patients onto clinical trials. FARSITE is a rapid ‘search and find’ tool designed to protect patient confidentiality, it significantly speeds up and increases patient recruitment onto a trial.

The Diabetes UK judges commented, "Connecting patients to research is great for diabetes. This is a really interesting and different project with good patient outcomes, and a strong collaboration, with many groups coming together, especially IT. This has the potential to be totally scalable, as the take-up rate so far has been pretty amazing!"

“Participating in a clinical study really makes a different to future care, both for the patient and for other people with diabetes. Research is essential for the development of new treatments and improved care programmes for the disease.”
Professor Martin Gibson, NorthWest EHealth, Chief Executive

 For more information on the Help BEAT Diabetes Campaign, visit the Research for the Future’s website: www.researchforthefuture.org. If you are interested in how FARSITE works, or want to find out more, please contact FARSITE@nweh.org.uk.

Diabetes Collaboration Initiative of the Year (2016). Diabetes UK. http://www.qualityincare.org/diabetes/awards/results/qic_diabetes_2016_results/diabetes_collaboration_initiative_of_the_year