RAPIDE: Regular and Unplanned Care Adaptive Dashboard for Cross-Border Emergencies
Cross-border health emergencies or pandemics can overwhelm health and care services with large numbers of people requiring unplanned care. This results in delays and backlogs to regular (non-pandemic) care leading to unmet clinical needs and poor health outcomes. To mitigate these impacts, healthcare systems must become more resilient and flexible and adapt the delivery of care, including hybrid care for future health emergencies.
RAPIDE is an EU-funded multi-disciplinary research project with thirteen partners including the University of Galway coordinated by the Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands.
Partners include:
Ireland: University of Galway, Pintail Limited
Netherlands: Radboud University Medical Center, Radboud University, University of Twente, European Forum for Primary Care, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, HAN University of Applied Sciences
Norway: Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Slovenia: Community Health Centre Ljubljana
Estonia: Proud Engineers
Italy: Accademia Italiana Cure Primarie
Malta: University of Malta
Main aims
The RAPIDE project aims to develop, validate and demonstrate a portfolio of tools to enhance the resilience of healthcare systems during cross border emergencies. RAPIDE’s objectives are to predict regular care needs along the patient pathway and develop hybrid care models for effective patient care.
RAPIDE’s research programme explained
RAPIDE is reviewing and analysing the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic to determine how regular care was impacted, and to identify the interventions and approaches worked best to maintain regular care.
In-depth interviews with healthcare systems managers, clinicians and GPs in selected EU countries, combined with a rigorous systematic review of the literature, will improve understanding of the impact of health emergencies on regular care. This work will provide valuable input for healthcare policy at national and European levels.
RAPIDE examines how regular (non-pandemic) healthcare was managed during the COVID-19 pandemic across a variety of healthcare settings, including primary care, secondary care, tertiary care, and home-based care in the European context. Modifications to service delivery, workforce strategies, and governance frameworks that supported the continuity of non-pandemic care during the COVID-19 pandemic are examined, as well as the reported impacts and challenges of these modifications on healthcare delivery. It includes findings on adaptations implemented across various health specialities, as well as a detailed exploration of modifications specific to RAPIDE’s three tracer conditions – type 2 diabetes, heart failure, and elective orthopaedic surgeries.
RAPIDE’s participatory research will identify barriers to care among patients including underserved groups and determine how best to maintain regular care during a health emergency. Factors examined including fear of infection in hospitals and primary care facilities, but also a reluctance to place a burden on over-loaded healthcare systems.
Scenario analysis will be performed for operational, tactical and strategic planning. RAPIDE will combine powerful scenario-exploration forecasting models with patient-flow forecasting and resource optimisation tools to curate an effective, adaptive Decision Support System for health system planners and policymakers to use for pandemic preparedness.
RAPIDE is also evaluating patient care pathways to explore each constituent component, in terms of cost, location and required competencies. Factors such as urgency, location-specificity, amenability to relocation, requirements for specific resources, and patient value will be explored, allowing the examination of a variety of optimisation care configurations and assessing related requirements to inform the development of the RAPIDE logic model.
Using a patient-centred approach, RAPIDE will select the best digital healthcare tools from the published literature and commercial market, which can help us implement our new healthcare logic model. Tools will be co-selected with patients and clinicians for their ability to support virtual, hybrid or community-based delivery of appropriate care, or to enable effective home-based care.
As the RAPIDE approach aims to redefine patient pathways, the input of patients, their carers, hospital clinicians, GPs and community care providers will be essential. Practical, flexible approaches to maintaining usual care during major health crises will be tested in practice, in “living labs”. In the Netherlands, Italy, Slovenia and Malta, scenarios and care models will be developed with healthcare providers and patients and tested in adult patients with chronic conditions or who are undergoing planned elective surgical procedures. The project will also examine how the basic principles of flexible care models can then be translated into the healthcare systems of other European countries.
Using literature findings, lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, and results from the care optimisation tool, RAPIDE will support the reconfiguration of healthcare services, enabling a blended hospital + community + home care model. To identify and verify effective, acceptable ways to make our new care configuration a reality, a full-scale demonstration and simulation of the open-access RAPIDE management and hybrid care delivery tools in multiple EU countries will be conducted with key stakeholders.
Prof Máire Connolly, Professor of Global Health and PI of the RAPIDE project at the University of Galway confirmed that “RAPIDE’s long-term goal is for healthcare systems across Europe to utilise novel digital health technologies, models, and approaches to enhance regular non-pandemic care during health emergencies.. RAPIDE’s software tools, logical models, care delivery mechanisms and methods, remote care capabilities, patient-empowering technologies, and training resources—co-created with patients and other stakeholders— will facilitate the transition to new models of care. The hybrid care models being developed could also potentially support health care delivery in rural and remote regions in normal situations.”
To learn more about RAPIDE, visit our website (www.rapideproject. eu) and join us on X, https://x.com/ RapideProjectEU and LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/ company/rapide-project-eu.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
Written by Professor Máire Connolly, University of Galway and Danielle Nicholson, Pintail Limited
Read more Clinical Features
Read March HPN