Our Partnerships

In 2018, the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) updated their treatment standards for metastatic soft tissue sarcoma (STS). The new regimen involved the addition of a new chemotherapy drug to the existing standard single agent therapy, requiring patients to spend more time in hospital receiving treatment. Lilly UK collaborated with the Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre on a joint project which identified a need to improve the efficiency and patient experience of the chemotherapy service and minimise the time patients would spend attending the clinic.

Working together, we identified areas for service improvement and implemented a new nurse-led service to provide care from a single specialist nurse. The new service was able to reduce patients’ time in hospital by an average of 53.6%, saving patients an average of 4 hours 34 minutes per visit. The partnership not only improved patients’ experience and care but also resulted in efficiencies for the centre as empowering nurses to lead the system reduced the time required from other members of staff.

Learn more from publications by PharmaField and PharmaTimes .

Lilly is currently working with Newcastle Upon Tyne NHS Foundation Trust on the MySkinSelfie mobile phone app for skin self-monitoring. The app is used to support photographic skin self-monitoring between patients and their clinician. The app was designed and built by Newcastle Hospital NHS Trust in collaboration with the OpenLab for human computer interaction, based at Newcastle University School of Computing Science.

In a recent study of urgent and non-urgent skin cancer referrals in Bristol and Newcastle, it was found that patient uptake of the MySkinSelfie app nearly doubled during the COVID-19 pandemic (51% compared to 26%). The app provided an effective alternative that reduced face-to-face visits during the COVID-19 pandemic, aiding remote consultations and diagnosis in both centres. The app reduced face-to-face appointments by 58% for basal cell carcinoma referrals compared to before the pandemic, and by 63% for two-week-wait skin cancer referrals during the pandemic. Phone applications and digital technology such as MySkinSelfie provide easily implementable cost-saving measures that keep patients out of hospital and free up clinical capacity.

Learn more in this retrospective review.

A team of healthcare professionals from across Wales worked with academic staff at Swansea University to develop an education app for patients with diabetes. The project was supported by Lilly UK under a joint working agreement. The free to download app helps patients on insulin therapy check for injection site reactions and learn how to manage them.

The idea for the app came from healthcare professionals who were concerned that this essential check was being neglected during the switch to remote consultations because of COVID-19. Following successful testing within Wales, the app is now being rolled out across the UK. More details can be found at https://clinicathome.swan.ac.uk/

See publications from the Diabetes Times and Diabetes Wales here.

Lilly UK and NHS Devon jointly developed the ProActive Diabetes Register Management (PARM), a simple to use clinical data tool, which uses practice-level data to enable the quick and easy identification of diabetes patients who most need intervention and a multidisciplinary approach to care. The tool works by identifying the most appropriate cohort of patients in their catchment area to be reviewed by clinicians. This supports more patients to manage their own health, be discharged from secondary care faster and be given the right level of support from their practice. Equally, it provides multi-disciplinary teams with valuable educational tools to manage more complex patients in primary care settings. The excel-based tool is free to use and has been successfully rolled out across Devon, Cornwall, parts of Kent, and North West London.

Learn more from publications by Business & Industry and The Telegraph.

City Hospitals Sunderland approached Lilly UK for support while implementing a new meditech IT system into clinical practice. By providing a specialist nurse to monitor the system, enabling patients with diabetes to reviewed and / or triaged by a diabetes specialist, the project achieved its primary aims of reducing inpatient stays, costs and bed days.

Learn more about the project from PharmaTimes.

The diabetes team at Gartnavel Hospital were aware that acute management of in-hospital hypoglycaemia could be improved. Under a joint working project with Lilly, the project team identified multiple opportunities for intervention to reduce the recurrence of inpatient hypoglycaemia. The project concluded that proactive specialist advice triggered by remote review could reduce the burden of hypoglycaemia, but therapy changes might be better made by a specialist team directly rather than just being advised.

Learn more about the study here.

• Lewisham Diabetes Optimisation Project

• Diabetes Self Check Project with Swansea Bay

• Slough PCN Insulin Mentorship for Clinical Pharmacists

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• ‘Best to PEST’* Multi-disciplinary & Multi-specialty Psoriatic Arthritis Project * Psoriasis Epidemiological Screening Tool. Reviewed May 2020