Swiss Frailty Network and Repository: Protocol of a Swiss Personalized Health Network's Driver Project Observational Study

Overview

Journal BMJ Open

Specialty General Medicine

Date 2021 Jul 15

PMID 34261684

Citations 3

Authors

Michael Gagesch

Karin Edler

Patricia O Chocano-Bedoya

Lauren A Abderhalden

Laurence Seematter-Bagnoud

Tobias Meyer

Dominic Bertschi

Dina Zekry

Christophe J Bula

Gabriel Gold

Reto W Kressig

Andreas E Stuck

Heike A Bischoff-Ferrari

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Introduction: Early identification of frailty by clinical instruments or accumulation of deficit indexes can contribute to improve healthcare for older adults, including the prevention of negative outcomes in acute care. However, conflicting evidence exists on how to best capture frailty in this setting. Simultaneously, the increasing utilisation of electronic health records (EHRs) opens up new possibilities for research and patient care, including frailty.

Methods And Analysis: The Swiss Frailty Network and Repository (SFNR) primarily aims to develop an electronic Frailty Index (eFI) from routinely available EHR data in order to investigate its predictive value against length of stay and in-hospital mortality as two important clinical outcomes in a study sample of 1000-1500 hospital patients aged 65 years and older. In addition, we will examine the correlation between the eFI and a test-based clinical Frailty Instrument to compare both concepts in Swiss older adults in acute care settings. As a Swiss Personalized Health Network (SPHN) driver project, our study will report on the characteristics and usability of the first nationwide eFI in Switzerland connecting all five Swiss University Hospitals' Geriatric Departments with a representative sample of patients aged 65 years and older admitted to acute care.

Ethics And Dissemination: The study protocol was approved by the competent ethics committee of the Canton of Zurich (BASEC-ID 2019-00445). All acquired data will be handled according to SPHN's ethical framework for responsible data processing in personalised health research. Analyses will be performed within the secure BioMedIT environment, a national infrastructure to enable secure biomedical data processing, an integral part of SPHN.

Trial Registration Number: NCT04516642.

Citing Articles

Frailty assessment in geriatric trauma patients: comparing the predictive value of the full and a condensed version of the Fried frailty phenotype.

Braunschweig J, Lang W, Freystatter G, Hierholzer C, Bischoff-Ferrari H, Gagesch M BMC Geriatr. 2024; 24(1):1007.

PMID: 39702108 PMC: 11657982. DOI: 10.1186/s12877-024-05594-x.

FAIRification of health-related data using semantic web technologies in the Swiss Personalized Health Network.

Toure V, Krauss P, Gnodtke K, Buchhorn J, Unni D, Horki P Sci Data. 2023; 10(1):127.

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Predictive Abilities of the Frailty Phenotype and the Swiss Frailty Network and Repository Frailty Index for Non-Home Discharge and Functional Decline in Hospitalized Geriatric Patients.

Stuck A, Schilling N, Bertschi D, Limacher A, Gagesch M, Bischoff-Ferrari H J Frailty Aging. 2022; 11(4):387-392.

PMID: 36346724 PMC: 9206419. DOI: 10.14283/jfa.2022.44.

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