Care Pathway Mapping for Dravet Syndrome (DS) Patients in England

Dravet syndrome (DS) is a rare, early onset, lifelong, epileptic encephalopathy characterised by frequent and severe convulsive seizures. Finding effective treatments is imperative to reducing seizures and improving patient outcomes: DS is highly burdensome for both the patient and their family as well as the healthcare system.

It is important to understand how care is currently delivered to children and adults to improve care to meet the needs of DS patients. Aquarius Population Health presented the results of our pilot study at this year’s ILAE British Branch Virtual Annual Scientific Conference. We describe how care for people with DS is delivered across England and determine the utilisation of healthcare resources for the treatment of patients with DS, and the effects of seizure burden and age group.

Gara-Adams R, Mowlem F, Thomas RH, et al. Care Pathway Mapping for Dravet Syndrome (DS) Patients in England – interim results from a pilot study. Presented at: ILAE British Branch Virtual Annual Scientific Conference, September 23 – 24, 2021; Virtual

Analysing the COPD care pathway in Japan, Canada, England, and Germany: a global view

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a preventable, progressive respiratory disease that causes airflow blockage and breathing problems. COPD caused 3.23 million deaths in 2019 (1), affecting approximately 384 million people globally (2); and is associated with significant resource burden with global costs estimated to be US$2.1 trillion in 2010, rising to US$4.8 trillion by 2030 (3).

Despite the availability of the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) recommendations for COPD management, there remains uncertainty around how care is currently delivered within individual countries and what barriers exist to optimal COPD care delivery.

Aquarius Population Health collaborated with AstraZeneca to present our research at a poster session at this year’s European Respiratory Society International Congress. Based on clinician interviews and local data reviews, our research advances our understanding of COPD care pathways in Japan, Canada, England, and Germany and identifies cross-cutting barriers to optimal COPD care. Opportunities for policy change were highlighted – to improve disease awareness, care management and patient outcomes while reducing resource use and costs.

Meiwald A, Gara-Adams R, Ma Y, et al. Analysing the COPD care pathway in Japan, Canada, England and Germany: a global view. Presented at: European Respiratory Society International Congress 2021, September 5 – 8, 2021; Virtual

1.  WHO. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) fact sheet. 2021

2. Adeloye D, Chua S, Lee C, et al. Global and regional estimates of COPD prevalence: Systematic review and meta–analysis. J Glob Health. 2015 ;5(2):020415.

3.  Bloom DE, Cafiero ET, Jané-Llopis E, et al. The Global Economic Burden of Noncommunicable Diseases. Geneva; 2011

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Cost-effectiveness and impact of five different point of care strategies to preserve last line treatment for gonorrhoea

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has developed to every class of antibiotic used for the treatment of gonorrhoea – and in recent years several multi-drug resistant strains of gonorrhoea have been reported in the UK and elsewhere. Once the prevalence of resistance to a first-line treatment reaches 5%, an alternative drug is selected as first-line treatment. In the UK, as with many other countries, ceftriaxone is the current first-line treatment for gonorrhoea. There are few alternative treatments available should ceftriaxone resistance become widespread and therefore steps are being taken to preserve the effectiveness of ceftriaxone by avoiding its use for infections that could be treated using other antibiotics.

Aquarius was commissioned by the Applied Diagnostic Research and Evaluation Unit (ADREU) at St. Georges London to compare the cost and effectiveness of five different strategies to test for antibiotic susceptibility in NG infections. We developed a decision tree model to assess how point-of-care (POC) testing could be used to diagnose gonorrhoea and at the same time test for antibody susceptibility, allowing the use of previously abandoned antibiotics for the majority of patients, thereby sparing ceftriaxone use.

The results of the model showed that all five strategies cost more than the current strategy of not testing for AMR. The paper concludes that AMR POC testing may enable improved antibiotic stewardship but would require investment into the health system.

The article was published in October in Eurosurveillance and is available free online [link].

Harding-Esch EM, Huntington SE, Harvey MJ, Weston G, Broad CE, Adams EJ, et al. Antimicrobial resistance point-of-care testing for gonorrhoea treatment regimens: cost-effectiveness and impact on ceftriaxone use of five hypothetical strategies compared with standard care in England sexual health clinics. Eurosurveillance [Internet]. 2020;25(43). Available from: https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.43.1900402

Test n Treat – rapid STI testing and treatment in colleges: study protocol

Sexually active young people attending London further education (FE) colleges have high rates of chlamydia, but screening rates are low. We describe the study protocol for “Test and Treat” (TnT), an NIHR-funded research study. This is a cluster randomised feasibility trial of frequent, rapid, on-site chlamydia testing using the Cepheid GeneXpert system and same-day treatment in six FE colleges. As part of the study we also conducted qualitative and economic assessments to assess the feasibility of conducting a future large-scale trial to investigate if TnT reduces chlamydia rates. The methods for recruitment, participant data collection, sample collection and testing are described, for baseline and follow-up in the control and intervention groups. The statistical analysis plan for TnT has been published separately.

 

PublicationKerry-Barnard S, Fleming C, Reid F, et al. ‘Test n Treat (TnT)’- Rapid testing and same-day, on-site treatment to reduce rates of chlamydia in sexually active further education college students: study protocol for a cluster randomised feasibility trial. Trials. 2018 Jun 5;19(1):311. doi: 10.1186/s13063-018-2674-8.

To request a copy of the published article, please email caroline.dombrowski@aquariusph.com.

Enabling more efficient patient management of blood stream infections

The Guardian supplement ‘Acting on AMR’, was published in March 2018, and focused on a number of ways to improve antimicrobial stewardship. This supplement included an article by Momentum Bioscience, which highlighted the importance of using technology to enable earlier rule-out of blood stream infections.

In addition to the benefits to patients, Aquarius conducted an economic analysis for Momentum Bioscience to estimate the impact if the test is used on neonates with suspected sepsis. Our estimates showed that if the test is used on all babies born in England, an estimated £6 million could be saved, with a significant reduction in the antibiotics used and length of stay of babies who were free from infection.

Publication Bennett, H  ‘How do we enable more efficient patient management and antibiotic stewardship?’ MediaPlanet (an independent supplement distributed in The Guardian) March 2018 p5.

 

 

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Mapping the treatment pathway for metastatic uveal melanoma patients in England: A qualitative pilot study

Metastatic uveal melanoma (mUM) is a rare disease, and with few effective therapeutic options it is unclear what patients receive as standard of care. Based on national guidelines, we mapped out real-world patient pathways with clinical experts across regional and supra-regional centres across England, to inform a consensus pathway of care following mUM diagnosis.

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Adams E, Cheng CY, Sacco J, et. al.  Mapping the treatment pathway for metastatic uveal melanoma (mUM) patients in England: A qualitative pilot study. Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer’s 32nd Annual Meeting. 8-10 November 2017, National Harbour, Maryland, USA.

 

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Using real world evidence to characterise a cohort of metastatic uveal melanoma patients in England

We identified a cohort of uveal melanoma (UM) and metastatic uveal melanoma (mUM) patients within England using the Hospital Episodes Statistics database, which had similar characteristics to other cohorts identified in the clinical literature.

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Schwenkglenks M, Alamgir G, Cheng CY, et al. A real world evidence (RWE) approach to characterising an ultra-rare disease (URD) cohort of metastatic uveal melanoma (mUM) patients within National Health Service England (NHSE). International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Annual European Congress. 4-8 November 2017. Glasgow, Scotland, UK.

 

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Quantifying standard of care hospital-related resource utilisation for metastatic uveal melanoma patients in England

We assessed the hospital resource use of a cohort of patient with uveal melanoma and metastatic uveal melanoma identified in the Hospital Episode Statistics in England. This showed differences in where patients receive care before and after they develop metastatic disease, indicated a high burden on health care services, and significant travel distances for patients receiving care.

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Cheng CY, Alamgir G, Adams EJ, et al. Quantifying standard of care (SoC) hospital-related resource utilisation for metastatic  uveal melanoma (mUM) patients in NHS England (NHSE) using the Hospital Episodes Statistics (HES) dataset. International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Annual European Congress. 4-8 November 2017. Glasgow, Scotland, UK.

 

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Cost-effectiveness of antimicrobial resistance point-of-care testing for optimising gonorrhoea treatment

In July, Emma Harding-Esch spoke at the STI and HIV World Congress in Rio on how to best manage the increasing challenge of anti-microbial resistance (AMR). The research she presented was a collaboration between Aquarius Population Health and ADREU St. Georges.  In recent years, there has been an increase in resistance to first-line therapies used to treat STIs such as gonorrhoea. The Aquarius team built a decision tree model to assess the cost-effectiveness of standard care compared to several hypothetical rapid point-of-care tests (POCT) for antibiotic susceptibility. The model simulated a cohort of sexual health clinic attendees. The results showed that while standard care is the cheapest option, AMR POCTs may be cost-effective and maximise the number of effective agents in treatment regimens, providing long-term benefits in some scenarios.

Harding-Esch EM, Huntington SE, Harvey MJ, et al. Cost-effectiveness of antimicrobial resistance point-of-care testing for optimising the treatment of gonorrhoea STI & HIV World Congress. 9-12 July 2017. Rio de Janiero, Brazil.

 

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Evaluating the costs, benefits and cost-effectiveness of multi-pathogen point-of-care tests for sexually transmitted infections

Evaluating multi-bug point-of-care tests for sexually transmitted infections

We estimated costs, benefits and cost-effectiveness of three accurate 30-minute NAAT POCT strategies that detect different STI combinations, compared with standard care  (laboratory-based NAAT for Chlamydia trachomatis (CT) and Neisseria gonorrhoeae (NG)).  We found the CT-NG-MG-TV POCT strategy was the cheapest using tariff costing. It offered the most benefits, which in turn may have wider public health impacts through rapid and accurate STI diagnosis and management. Different testing strategies may be more cost-effective in different SHCs and patient groups. Further evidence is needed to capture the diversity of STI prevalence and management of patients across clinical services to better inform economic analyses.

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Harding-Esch EM, Huntington SE, Burns RM, et al. Evaluating the costs, benefits and cost-effectiveness of multi-pathogen point-of-care tests for sexually transmitted infections STI & HIV World Congress. 9-12 July 2017. Rio de Janiero, Brazil.

 

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