Project to prevent cerebral palsy in premature babies wins funding

The ‘PReCePT’ project, developed in maternity units across the West of England, has been selected by the Health Foundation to be part of a £3.5 million improvement programme.

The Scaling Up Improvement programme supports seven projects in the UK to take their proven health care interventions and make them work at a larger scale to have positive impact on patient outcomes.

PReCePT, Prevention of Cerebral Palsy in PreTerm Labour, has been designed to help reduce cerebral palsy in babies by administering magnesium sulphate to mothers during preterm labour, at a cost of around £1 per individual dose.

Preterm birth is the leading cause of brain injury and cerebral palsy.

The initiative was developed by University Hospitals Bristols NHS Foundation Trust in collaboration with the West of England Academic Health Science Network (AHSN), and co-designed with both patients and staff. The NIHR Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health and Care (CLAHRC) West is evaluating the initiative.

The intervention was rolled out to all five maternity units in the West of England, namely: St Michael’s Hospital, Bristol; Gloucestershire Royal Hospital’ Great Western Hospital, Swindon; Southmead Hospital, Bristol; and Royal United Hospital, Bath.

It is estimated that the first phase of the initiative has so far prevented five to ten cases of cerebral palsy across the region, representing potential lifetime healthcare savings in the region of £5 million and more when including loss of productivity and social care costs over a lifetime.

As a result of the £0.5 million Scaling Up funding from the Health Foundation, support can now be provided to a further 10 hospital trusts around the country to implement PReCePT in their maternity units, covering the South, North West and South West of England, Midlands, Wales and London.

NIHR CLAHRC West will carry out an evaluation of the wider roll-out of the initiative and it is hoped this will inform future spread across all maternity units.

If rolled out nationally, it is predicted that up to 14,000 low birthweight babies could benefit each year.

The Scaling Up programme will run for two and a half years and each project will receive up to £0.5 million of funding to put their project into practice and evaluate it.

Karen Luyt, consultant in neonatal medicine at St Michael’s Hospital, said: “Magnesium sulphate is a very cost effective way to prevent brain injury in babies that are born early. We have already demonstrated that this evidence-based intervention can be put into practice rapidly and be sustained when supported by quality improvement (QI) methodology.

“Our aim with PReCePT2 is to scale up across the UK, ultimately making this potentially life changing intervention consistently available for every eligible preterm delivery.”

Sarah Henderson, associate director from the Health Foundation, said: “We are very excited to support seven outstanding project teams who have been selected because of their expertise in scaling complex improvement projects, and their ambition to achieve impact by improving care for patients.

"Working together, as part of the Scaling Up programme, we aim to make sustained improvements to health care by testing out proven interventions at a scale. We hope to see the interventions being widely adopted across the UK."