The five-year trial, led by Dr Emily Henderson, a Geriatrician at the Royal United Hospital in Bath and an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Bristol, will see the implementation of a new integrated care model designed specifically for people with Parkinson’s disease across two health hubs in Bath, UK and Nijmegen, Netherlands. The Bristol Randomised Controlled Trials Collaboration (BRTC) with Professor Ben-Shlomo, will lead on the methodology and evaluation for the project with the innovation for patients delivered through the Royal United Hospitals, Bath.
Although many different care providers play a role in supporting people with Parkinson’s, the collaboration between providers can be fragmented. Patients can struggle therefore to access the right services at the right time to tackle what can be very troublesome and debilitating symptoms of the condition.
This project aims to bridge that gap by developing and evaluating a new model of proactive and integrated care that addresses the patients’ needs. This model, will capitalise on the experience and infrastructure already present in both the UK and the Netherlands. It is anticipated that, around 1,000 patients with Parkinson’s will be recruited for the trial from the RUH catchment areas, with simultaneous innovations being implemented in the Netherlands.
The project, entitled Proactive and Integrated Management and Empowerment in Parkinson’s Disease (PRIME-Parkinson), will be rigorously evaluated to determine the extent to which health can be improved and health care costs can be reduced.