Case studies

Professor Andrew Weeks: The post partum haemorrhage (PPH) Butterfly – clinical testing and commercial development

Post Partum Haemorrhage (PPH), loss of blood after childbirth, is a common maternity emergency affecting 40,000 women across the UK each year. The incidence and severity of PPH is increasing and novel treatments are urgently needed. The most common cause is failure of the womb to contract, and drugs are first administered to stimulate the womb to contract. If these fail, then the woman is taken into an operating theatre to find the source of the bleeding, and physical methods used to stop the bleeding under anaesthetic. A device that could simply ‘turn off the tap’, without the need for…

Prof Fiona Lobban: IMPlementation of A Relatives’ Toolkit: Examining the critical success factors, barriers and facilitators to implementation of an online supported self-management intervention in the NHS (IMPART study)

The IMPART study, funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Services and Delivery Research (HS&DR) Programme (project number 14/04/16), successfully received funding following expert advice from the NIHR Research Design Service North West (RDS NW). The study uses an iterative case series design in six NHS Trusts and examines the implementation process of an online support self-management intervention for relatives of people with psychosis / bipolar disorder in Early Intervention Services. This is an important study that aims to help reduce the evidence-practice gap and will have broad implications for digital development across healthcare settings. See www.nets.nihr.ac.uk/projects/hsdr/140416…

Dr Elizabeth Tyler: Developing and evaluating a psychological therapy for older adults with bipolar disorder

Dr Elizabeth Tyler, a clinical psychologist based at the Spectrum Centre for Mental Health at Lancaster University has recently been awarded a NIHR Doctoral Fellowship. The research will focus on developing and testing out a recovery focused cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) intervention for older adults with bipolar disorder (BD). BD is a severe and chronic mental health problem that persists into older adulthood. Current estimates suggest around 0.5 per cent of people over 65 years of age are living with BD (Depp and Jeste, 2004). However this figure is set to rise as the UK experiences a rapid ageing of its population…