Gathering better information to improve heart failure care for everyone

Using large databases to describe the current management of heart failure in England and model risk trajectories to improve shared decision-making

Over half a million people in the UK are living with heart failure, a debilitating condition with no cure where the heart is not pumping blood around the body efficiently. People with heart failure are usually under the care of their GP and healthcare professionals in their local surgery. However heart failure management can be challenging and it is currently difficult to predicting the risk of individuals with heart failure reaching ‘crisis points’ that require hospitalisation. In this project, Dr Alex Bottle and his team want to improve this by analysing a database of GP and hospital records, following patients from initial diagnosis, to the last few months of life. They will describe the current management of heart failure and compare it with practice 10 years ago. They will also model how patients’ risk of death changes over time and investigate to what extent it can be predicted from patients’ information that is available to GPs. This work will help patients and doctors understand how heart failure progresses and inform decisions about their care.