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Cystic fibrosis (CF) is one of the UK's most common, life-shortening, genetically inherited diseases. There are currently more than 10,500 people in the UK with CF with an annual expenditure for CF in England of approx £100m, (£9,500 per patient). In the last 50 years there have been major advances in CF care, however each new therapy has added the heavy burden of treatment. The aim of this project is to investigate if a new model of care has the ability to engage children and adolescents with CF in self management and as a result, reduce the burden of care.

There are three pillars to maximizing the hospital capacity: efficient allocation of beds, understanding and managing the condition of patients, and the focus of staff upon a prioritised set of activities. Traditional bed management focuses upon the first of these, but in hospitals that are typically over 95% full, they provide little benefit. Our approach focuses upon use of mobile software to achieve regular, accurate capture of patient status, and efficient allocation and prioritisation of work for staff. Our proposal combines lean thinking, patient centric pathways, and right clinician, right place, tight time concepts; translating this understanding into capacity management.

The adequate provision of prostheses for children and young people is complex, reflecting the changing size, diversity of activities, as well as early social and psychological development of this cohort. The critical concerns of the child, the parent and the healthcare professional are that care promotes independence, is tailored to the individual, and complements their needs by maximising choice. Currently, this process is restricted due to cost and increased demand on limited NHS resources. As such, this proposal looks to address these concerns through the provision of affordable, multi-grip, robotic prostheses for children and young people with upper limb deficiencies.