Dr Rachel Jordan and Professor Peymane Adab, from the University of Birmingham’s Institute of Applied Health Research, won the prize for category two, which included papers from ophthalmology, respiratory health and renal research areas.
The annual awards, presented by the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) on 19 September 2017, give recognition to an individual or group of researchers who have undertaken and published an exceptional piece of research relating to general practice or primary care.
Dr Rachel Jordan and Professor Peymane Adab’s paper, published in July 2016 by the Lancet, assessed the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of two alternative approaches to targeted case finding for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) compared with routine practice.
The research, funded by the National Institute for Health Research, found that active case finding was more cost-effective than opportunistic case finding, at a saving of over £40 (£333 vs £376 per case detected, respectively).
Commenting on the award Dr Jordan said: “A large number of people with COPD are not diagnosed until their disease is quite advanced. GPs could identify people at risk from their practice lists and invite them for further tests. By doing so, many people with early COPD who could potentially benefit from effective treatments could be identified earlier.”
Professor Adab added: “The next challenge is to identify therapies which can genuinely improve outcomes in those detected earlier.”