STREAM 1: Accelerating Impact of Community healthCarE in Tayside (AICCET)

AICCET will enable better prognostics, the process by which disease is diagnosed and the outcome of treatment predicted. This allows for improved treatment planning, a pre-requisite for a better patient journey and experience. It does this by avoiding unnecessary hospital in-patient care, enabling outpatient procedures using technologies which do not require highly specialised personnel such that clinics can move closer to the community they serve. This move away from hospital based healthcare is further enabled through monitoring patient health at home and managing chronic disease with solutions provided to the GPs, all moving healthcare further into the community.

Examples of such interventions include:
1. Inch-worm technology provides a solution which reduces risk to patients, makes the device easier to use by NHS staff, and moves the procedure away from a costly secondary care location performed by specialised clinicians into a community out-patient setting. Public Patient Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) is particularly important for accelerating the impact of this technology, with significant potential for reducing healthcare inequalities as traditional endoscopy has reduced efficacy in certain patient phenotypes (high BMI, infirm or living with disability) and colonoscopy screening has reduced uptake in those with a lower socio-economic background due to difficulties accessing transport to a central hospital or from fear of the current procedure - leading to late diagnosis and poor prognoses. (Manfredi - University of Dundee).
2. Power frugal algorithms used in wearable electronics for the detection of scabbing in sheep can be applied to outpatients in the community who are soon to have invasive surgery. It has been shown that exercise prior to surgical operation helps positive outcome of surgery. The device will help reduce visit hospitals during the pre-habilitation and also post-habilitation phase allowing doctors to monitor remotely the progress made by the patients as they undergo prescribed training exercises.

The AICCET consortium has gathered 14 organisations (5 universities, a further education college, 5 civic bodies, 1 hospital and 2 NHS organisations in the Tayside region to address the challenges of community healthcare. This consortium is in direct alignment with the "shift left" taking place in the continuum of care enabled by technological and process solutions that offer the highest quality of life for patients through the simultaneous provision of improved quality of healthcare and reduced costs of provision.

AICCET is putting in place the mechanisms to accelerate impact in community healthcare of innovative research created by these 5 universities. AICCET sets up the foundations of a healthcare technology ecosystem addressing the barriers for research and innovation and increasing the connectivity to accelerate impact in community healthcare.