Information for researchers and clinicians

AlveoliCOPD affects 5-10% of people worldwide, is rising in prevalence and is a leading cause of death. It accounts for 1.4 million GP consultations, 1 million inpatient days per year and costs the NHS more than £800m per year. Societal costs are also high with ~24m lost working days attributable to COPD. As a result of the increasing recognition of the burden of COPD, its significant under-diagnosis (estimated at around 50%) and variation in access to relevant services, a National Clinical Outcomes Strategy has been published. Our programme of work complements the new strategy and will provide evidence for many of the highlighted areas of need.

The aim of this programme is to recruit a unique UK primary care COPD cohort, as a platform for testing novel health service interventions resulting in patient benefit, both within this proposal and in future outside the programme. The cohort will comprise both new and existing cases of COPD recruited using the local PCRN-CE network of general practices, and will also reflect the ethnic diversity of the West Midlands. This 5-year programme consists of 3 work-packages to address some of the key issues:

  • TargetCOPD: RCT to compare the cost-effectiveness of two alternative case-finding approaches for identifying undiagnosed COPD
  • The Birmingham COPD Cohort : Primary care cohort and prognostic index
  • COPE: COPD and Occupational PErformance