Electronic frailty index will identify older people at risk

A collaborative study involving Professor Simon Conroy from our Department of Health Sciences has been awarded £550,000 from the NIHR Health Technology Assessment programme to develop the next version of the multi-award winning electronic frailty index (eFI). The study will develop a new tool, the eFI+, that will identify older people living with frailty who are at increased risk of requiring home care services, experiencing a fall, being admitted to a care home, or dying so that appropriate evidence-based interventions can be provided.

The team is led by the Academic Unit of Elderly Care & Rehabilitation, Leeds Institute of Health Sciences (LIHS), in partnership with Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, NHS Bradford CCG and researchers from Keele University, UCL, University of Exeter, University of Leicester, University of Nottingham and University of Swansea.

Professor Conroy said: "Identifying frailty and responding to it holistically is critical for the future of the health and social care systems. This new research will undoubtedly lead to more sophisticated approached and make the best use of NHS resources. We are delighted to be involved."

The team will use data from ResearchOne, the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) databank and Leeds Data Model, which are large, anonymised primary care and linked databases, alongside data from the Community Ageing Research 75+ (CARE75+) cohort study to develop the eFI+. The impact of the research has potential to benefit society as a whole, as it will enable provision of evidence-based and suitably costed interventions to improve outcomes for older people, the NHS and social care.