Collaborative Working Project between Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and Pfizer Limited

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Collaborative Working

Developing and co ordinating clinical pathways to review and optimise the diagnosis and treatment of patients with a suspected or confirmed diagnosis of cardiac amyloidosis across North & West Yorkshire.

Background

Cardiac Amyloidosis (CA) is a progressive infiltrative heart muscle disease, caused by the accumulation of insoluble amyloid fibrils in the heart muscle (myocardium). The resulting cardiomyopathy eventually progresses to end-stage heart failure. Life expectancy without access to specialised treatment is poor.

Project

This project is aimed at supporting, via a collaborative working agreement between the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (LTHT) and Pfizer UK Ltd., the delivery of a comprehensive plan to educate, improve disease awareness, develop operational capabilities and understand and deliver patient focused services with equity, all targeted at improving clinical pathways across West Yorkshire and North Yorkshire.

The project will fund the provision of a Clinical Fellow working in the Heart Failure Service and Heart Muscle Disease Clinic to support the care of patients with cardiac amyloidosis. This approach aims to ensure that there is a thorough and coordinated clinical pathway to assess cardiac amyloidosis patients through local multidisciplinary teams (MDT) and ensure access to diagnostics and licensed treatments in a timely manner.

Benefits

Benefits to patients

Improved and more timely access to specialised diagnostics, clinics and treatments.
Coordinated patient pathway for cardiac amyloidosis.
Improve adherence to medicines through additional clinical fellow specialist support.
Continuity of care between the tertiary hospital and secondary care hospitals.
Reduction in number of unnecessary hospital visits.
Supporting better outcomes for cardiac amyloidosis patients (e.g., improve decision making at specialist MDT, access to expert diagnostics, direct links to the National Amyloidosis Centre (NAC)).
Timely case review will lead to quicker MDT discussions, faster access to specialist services, and reduced waiting times for diagnostics.
Reduced variation between Trusts across the network for all CA patients entering the clinical pathway.

Benefits to the NHS

Increased cross hospital collaboration.
Improved clinical pathways.
Reduced cardiology waiting times.
Maintain or improve the time from referral to diagnosis of 43 days at LTHT.
Improved access to diagnostics.
Reduced duplication of imaging and other diagnostic investigations.
Improved education on cardiac amyloidosis.
Clinical care aligned with standards of care developed by the NAC.
Data collection in line with interventions of Rare Disease Framework and England Action Plan 2022.
Improved education on cardiac amyloidosis..

Benefits to Pfizer

The project may result in the identification of patients who are eligible for appropriate treatments prescribed in line with current national and local guidelines (which may include licensed Pfizer medicine).
Accelerated initiation of appropriate licensed treatments for patients diagnosed with cardiac amyloidosis under the guidance of an expert clinician.
Increased understanding of service provision and patient pathway design

Outcomes

To improve the care of patients with cardiac amyloidosis by improving awareness, education, equity of access and clinical pathways across the North & West Yorkshire areas.

Proposed term of the collaborative working project

Start date: 1st September 2025
End date: 31st August 2026

Resource allocation

Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust will contribute:

Human resource support: 640 hours £22,400.00

Pfizer UK Ltd will contribute:

Clinical Fellow funding: £93,583.00
Human resource support: 150 hours £5,250.00