Sensyne Health has acquired the SUPPORT-HF™ digital health software developed by researchers at The George Institute for Global Health at the University of Oxford. SUPPORT-HF has been designed to help patients and clinicians in managing heart failure and curate data for medical research using clinical Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Following six years of research and development, and a 30-month, 202-person randomised controlled trial, due to be submitted for publication in late 2018, Sensyne Health plan to develop a cloud-based, scalable version of SUPPORT-HF to help support the management of heart failure in the community.

Professor Kazem Rahimi, Honorary Consultant Cardiologist at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford and Chief Investigator of SUPPORT-HF at The George Institute, commented:

“This simple software enables heart failure patients to understand and monitor their condition and take control of their treatment in their own homes. An affordable, sustainable system, it has the potential to not only empower patients, but to strengthen the health system to bring specialist knowledge to non-specialists.”

Heart failure affects 26 million people worldwide and is now considered a global epidemic. In the UK, 900,000 patients are estimated to have the disease, and almost as many have damaged hearts but have not yet shown symptoms of heart failure. Heart failure is currently the leading cause of hospital admissions for those aged 65 years and older with admissions expected to rise by 50% over the next 25 years. The management of heart failure represents a significant cost burden to the NHS, with 1-2% of the total annual budget estimated to be spent on the condition.

SUPPORT-HF is the fourth digital health software product Sensyne Health, a British clinical AI technology company, has acquired as part of its five-year strategic research agreement with the University of Oxford and Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

The collaboration between Sensyne Health, the University of Oxford and the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, established in July 2017, creates a pathway for the commercial development of digital health innovations invented and clinically validated by the University and the Trust.

Dr James Groves, Senior Licensing and Ventures Manager at Oxford University Innovation, the technology transfer company for this collaboration, said:

“SUPPORT-HF is another example of cutting-edge digital health technology coming out of Oxford, created through the cross-disciplinary collaboration between doctors, engineers and software developers. We look forward to seeing this technology making a positive difference to the workload of doctors, the finances of the NHS and the health of patients suffering from heart failure.”

• To learn more about the project, please visit the SUPPORT-HF website 

By Professor Robyn Norton

Today, The George Institute for Global Health, in concert with the Oxford Martin School, released a new paper calling on global policymakers to redefine and broaden the women’s health agenda. The paper (PDF), was launched at a meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Global Health in the UK.

For decades, global women’s health policy has been centered on sexual and reproductive health. World governments and governing bodies, such as the World Health Organization and the World Bank, among other NGOs, have developed a laser-like focus on reducing the scourge of maternal mortality and morbidity.

The good news is that global efforts have worked.

Significant gains have been made in saving the lives of women and children. As a result of the Global Strategy for Women and Children’s Health launched by the UN in 2010, an estimated 2.4 million deaths of women and children have been averted in the last five years alone.  

The bad news is we are stuck with an outdated operating framework that too often limits the definition of a women’s health to her reproductive organs.

The fact is that in all but the poorest countries, the greatest health burden is non-communicable diseases, or NCDs. Seven of the 10 leading causes of death for women worldwide are now non-communicable diseases, such as heart disease, stroke and diabetes. NCDs kill more than 18 million women a year worldwide.

However, the preponderance of global dollars assigned for “women’s health” is still focused on sexual and reproductive health.

The gains made should be promoted, celebrated and sustained. But we need to move the women’s health agenda beyond a primary focus on reproductive health issues. If global leaders do not broaden and redefine the agenda – this progress will slide. Unless the primary killers of women—NCDs—are part of the agenda, health investments could lead to decreasing return for women’s health overall and will only benefit a small slice of the female population who are of childbearing years.

In addition to a broader women’s health agenda the paper calls for a focus by health administrators and the scientific and academic communities on ensuring a gendered approach to the analysis of health data. As we deepen our understanding of how the human body works, we know that women and men respond differently to disease and to possible interventions. We are also beginning to understand that health systems respond differently to women and men such that both access to care and the quality of care differs. Yet, far too commonly, there is no delineation of gender in health data, and women are underrepresented in many scientific and clinical studies.

At The George Institute, we believe that ones’ health and life expectancy shouldn’t be determined by geography, socioeconomic status, fate – or gender. This is the first in a series of papers aimed at igniting a global public conversation about the women’s health agenda and ultimately driving policy changes that will save lives.

• Download the 'Women's Health: A New Global Agenda' policy paper (PDF)
• Read the ‘Women’s Health: A New Global Agenda’ policy paper media release

Three researchers from The George Institute for Global Health have been named among the world’s most influential scientific minds in a new report by Thomson Reuters.

The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds 2015 report is based on the number of cited research papers an academic published from 2003 to 2013. It identifies the best and most influential scholars from among the estimated nine million researchers who publish papers each year.

In the introduction, Thomson Reuters Vice-President Emmanuel Thiveaud wrote: “This report is an updated listing of the elite authors officially designated as Highly Cited Researchers, based on their respective output of top-cited papers in their fields… It features the scientists who have won acclaim and approval within a key population: their peers.”

The George Institute’s researchers named were:

Professor Stephen MacMahon

Prof MacMahon is Principal Director and one of the founders of The George Institute. He is a Professor of Medicine at both the University of Sydney and the University of Oxford, where he is a James Martin Professorial Fellow. He is an international authority on the causes, prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases and has a special interest is the management of chronic and complex conditions in resource-poor settings, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region.

Professor Bruce Neal

Prof Neal is Senior Director of the Food Policy Division at The George Institute for Global Health, a Professor of Medicine at the University of Sydney and Chair of the Australian Division of World Action on Salt and Health.

Professor Mark Woodward

Working in the Professorial Advisory Unit of The George Institute, Prof Woodward is a Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Sydney, Professor of Statistics and Epidemiology at the University of Oxford and Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University.

Chief Scientist at The George Institute, Prof Anushka Patel congratulated the researchers. “This is an outstanding achievement for them and the Institute. That this honour is based on citations and their influence on their peers is a prime example of the quality and impact of our research,” she said.

Download The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds 2015 report 

Blood pressure-lowering drugs should be offered to all individuals at high risk of having a heart attack or stroke regardless of their blood pressure at the start of treatment, according to the largest meta-analysis conducted to date involving over 600,000 people, published in The Lancet.

The authors call for an urgent revision of current blood pressure-lowering guidelines, including those of NICE and the European Society of Hypertension, that have recently relaxed blood pressure targets from 130/85 mmHg to 140/90 mmHg, and for the elderly to even higher targets of 150/90 mmHg. They also recommend a shift from rigid blood pressure targets to individualised risk-based targets, even when blood pressure is below 130 mmHg before treatment.

In this study, Professor Kazem Rahimi from The George Institute for Global Health, based at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, and colleagues analysed the findings of 123 large-scale randomised trials comparing different blood pressure targets from January 1966 to July 2015.

They found that treatment with any of the main classes of blood pressure-lowering drugs significantly the reduced risk of major cardiovascular events, stroke, heart failure, and death proportional to the extent to which blood pressure was lowered. Overall, every 10 mmHg reduction in systolic blood pressure reduced the risks of major cardiovascular disease events and heart disease by about one fifth, and stroke and heart failure by about a quarter, and the risk of death from any cause by 13%.

Read the full story at the Oxford Martin School website.

The George Institute for Global Health UK has joined The Nuffield Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology (NDOG).

The move will provide exciting new opportunities to work together towards improving the health of women and babies around the world.  TGI's mission is to increase access to quality health care for millions of people worldwide - with a particular focus on vulnerable populations in resource-poor settings.  TGI has extensive experience in conducting large-scale clinical trials, establishing collaborative networks of prospective birth and childhood cohorts, and innovative approaches to health service delivery in the UK and around the world.  TGI's current focus on cardiovascular and non-communicable diseases also complements the work of several groups in NDOG.  Non-communicable diseases present differently in women and can be influenced by events in pregnancy (both for the mother and developing baby).

Professor Stephen Kennedy, Head of NDOG, said: “We are delighted to welcome TGI into the department and we look forward to working with this group of world-class researchers.  We have already identified several common interests, which will enhance our existing research activities and open up new possibilities."

Professor Terry Dwyer, Director of TGI UK, said: “This is a great opportunity for us to further develop areas of major interest for us in women’s risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer, and in infant health. Hopefully, we will also be able to make a difference to some of the research programs already active in NDOG with our significant expertise in epidemiology, biostatistics, and big data analysis.  We are really looking to the interactions we will have with the NDOG team in the coming years."