Sustained patient use and improved outcomes with digital transformation of a COPD service: RECEIVER trial and DYNAMIC-SCOT COVID-19 scale-up response

Introduction

LenusCOPD has been co-designed to enable digital transformation of COPD services for proactive preventative care. Patient-facing progressive web application, clinician dashboard and support website integrate patient-reported outcomes (PROs), self-management resources, structured clinical summary, wearable and home NIV data with asynchronous patient-clinician messaging. We commenced the implementation-effectiveness observational cohort RECEIVER trial in September 2019, with the primary endpoint of sustained patient usage and secondary endpoints including admissions, mortality, exacerbations, service workload and quality of life. We paused recruitment in March 2021 and provided LenusCOPD as routine care in the “DYNAMIC-SCOT” COVID-19 response service scale-up.

Methods

83 RECEIVER trial participants and 142 DYNAMIC-SCOT participants had completed minimum 1 year follow-up when we censored data on 31^st August 2021. We established a control cohort with 5 patients matched per RECEIVER participant from de-identified contemporary routine clinical data.

Results

Sustained patient app utilisation was noted in both cohorts. Median time to admission or death was 43 days in control, 338 days in RECEIVER and 400 days in DYNAMIC-SCOT participants who had had a respiratory-related admission in the preceding year. The 12-month risk of admission or death was 74% in control patients, 53% in RECEIVER and 47% in the DYNAMIC-SCOT sub-cohort participants. There was a median of 2.5 COPD exacerbations per patient per year with stable quality of life across follow up and a manageable workload for clinical users.

Conclusions

A high proportion of people continued to use the co-designed LenusCOPD application during extended follow-up. Outcome data supports scale-up of this digital service transformation.

Key messages

What is the key question?

Can sustained patient interaction and improved patient outcomes be achieved with digital transformation of a COPD service?

What is the bottom line?

Participants continue to use the LenusCOPD patient app, with an average of 3-3.5 interactions per person per week sustained >1-year post-onboarding. COPD- related hospital admissions and occupied bed days were reduced following LenusCOPD onboarding in participants with a history of a severe exacerbation in the previous year, with a median time to readmission of 380 days compared with 50 days in a contemporary matched control patient cohort.

Why read on?

Feasibility and utility results support scale-up adoption of these digital tools, to support optimised co-management of COPD and other long-term conditions within a continuous implementation-evaluation framework. This will establish a test-bed infrastructure for additional innovations including artificial intelligence-insights for MDT decision support.