Project Lead
Jen Corda
Lead partner
Royal Children’s Hospital
MacHSR Future Leaders Fellowship Program (cohort 1).
CF is characterised by recurrent respiratory exacerbations which lead to irreversible lung damage. It is proposed that delays in treatment may lead to worse outcomes. Currently at RCH children with CF are reviewed four times a year, meaning that for the other 361 days of the year the burden of monitoring the health of the child falls solely on the family.
A remote monitoring system has been developed that increases symptom monitoring without necessarily increasing demand on the CF team. The system pushes out a symptom survey twice a week and if an exacerbation is detected an individualised treatment plan is automatically sent out. This project aims to pilot this model of increased symptom monitoring.
Time and skills afforded by the MacHSR Fellowship enabled the design and commencement of a pilot randomised controlled study to implement and evaluate a previously designed intervention to rapidly identify exacerbations in CF patients without increasing frequency of patient reviews.
In the first 3 months of the study 9 exacerbations were detected and semi structured interviews with staff and patients indicated acceptability of the remote monitoring system and the potential for it to increase patient engagement.
A Research Fellowship Grant through Cystic Fibrosis Australia and a Centre for Health Analytics Clinical Data Champion position were awarded to Jen Corda during the fellowship, furthering the progress of the project. The innovative digital model trialled will inform other disease areas, improving early identification of high-risk patients with minimal burden on the health service.