A formal NHS partner believes that sustained innovation-driven efforts to better manage frailty in Scotland are ‘facilitating more proactive care with improved outcomes sure to follow’

InnoScot Health sees the seeds of improved coordination between community health, social care, and hospitals being sown amid more personalised, tech-led interventions for better outcomes.

Last month, Health Secretary Neil Gray pledged that the national rollout of specialist frailty services across all 30 of Scotland’s A&E departments would reduce the length of hospital stays and eventually lower waiting lists.

Further to government pledges to target improvements in this area, Innovation Commercialisation Manager at InnoScot Health, Fiona Schaefer insists that recent breakthrough ideas are key to supporting that drive.

She said: “I believe we are at a tipping point in Scotland’s efforts to deliver improvements in better managing frailty in the community. With some 35 per cent of the population over 65 identified as mildly frail, 15 per cent moderately frail, and five per cent severely frail, acceleration of dedicated, targeted innovation is much needed.

“There are already some great ideas coming through for prediction and prevention of falls, but we need more, and the NHS Scotland workforce is in a great position to help do that thanks to its direct experience and insight into the opportunities and challenges.”

Injuries caused by falls are thought to be a leading cause of hospital admissions for those over 75 — but, Fiona says, “with the right data-driven support, many of those can be avoided, facilitating greater ability to bounce back from illness than would otherwise have been possible”.

A digital falls prevention platform built out of research lead by Dr Ana Talbot and developed with funding from The Health Foundation recently moved into a third phase of assessing the technology’s effectiveness, with national rollout expected.

The ‘No Need To Fall’ project has been co-designed by those with lived experience of falls and the healthcare staff who support them.

The trial — involving 20 patients in Lanarkshire — is exploring how technology can be used to address and improve people’s daily care and support needs, as well as shaping the response to any incidents which may occur. The latest phase is expected to conclude at the end of this year.

In order to tailor the support offered, a ‘personal digital space’ is being provided for people to have information about them stored securely, and which only they control.

‘No Need To Fall’is being managed through the West of Scotland Innovation Hub (WoSIH), which is hosted by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde in partnership with West of Scotland health boards.

Dr Ana Talbot, WoSIH innovation fellow for frailty and falls and consultant in older adult medicine with NHS Lanarkshire, is leading the project and said it is providing “a digital solution that helps to prevent falls and is also empowering and supportive to the individual”.

There is also the Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS), a judgement-based tool that helps assess illnesses, function, thinking and understanding to generate a frailty score for further assessment. CFS is available on the Right Decision Service – a ‘Once for Scotland’ source of digital tools enabling people to make quick and safe decisions based on validated evidence.

InnoScot Health initially worked in partnership with the Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre (DHI) to help develop the Right Decision Service, which was then launched by Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS).

InnoScot Health now has legal manufacturer responsibility for calculators, decision support tools that are integrated into the Right Decision Service.

Fiona continued: “Innovation is clearly underpinning improvement in frailty services, and we want to help NHS Scotland staff identify further solutions, not only to make lives better, but also to realise time and cost savings that can be redeployed back into the health service.”

InnoScot Health is seeking ideas from health and social care professionals that can help transform the quality of life for people living with frailty, while helping NHS Scotland adapt to changing demographics and increase in service use as people become frailer.