CarePath-COPD

COPD is a progressive condition and the third leading cause of death worldwide, with UK mortality among the highest in the EU. It commonly occurs alongside multiple long-term conditions, contributes to health disparities, and carries serious consequences in an ageing population, including cardiovascular risk, respiratory failure and lung cancer. Early diagnosis and timely interventions addressing unmet health and social care needs are critical for quality of life. Social care is particularly important, enabling more effective self-care and reducing reliance on healthcare resources, yet it remains undervalued and underfunded relative to healthcare. A key barrier is the lack of data-driven insight into how health and social care systems work together for people living with COPD. This project will address this gap by linking newly available social care datasets with existing healthcare and third-sector data to understand how well the system operates as a whole, and what this means for optimising pathways of care. Using this integrated data, we will develop innovative dashboards and novel predictive analytics to inform a co-designed theory of change, supporting earlier detection and more effective intervention. Optimised care pathways will then be tested and iteratively improved within a regional health and social care partnership testbed.

The full name of this study is: Novel Integrated Health and Social Care Data Enabling Earlier Detection of COPD and Intervention Delivery Through Optimised Care Pathways (CarePath-COPD) 

This project is funded for 36 months from April 1, 2026 – March 31, 2029