Terminal illness charity, Marie Curie, has launched its Design to Care Programme in a bid to create a flexible end of life service that can be rolled out across the UK.
The five year, £3.5million initiative aims to provide a blueprint for the future of tailored care for people living with a terminal illness, that meets the increasing demand and complex palliative care needs of the UK’s ageing population.
Professionals in palliative care, engineering, design, social sciences and public health will be coming together as part of the programme to take a radical look at end of life care and how it can be redesigned to provide better, more personalised care for those who are terminally ill.
Marie Curie is working with the University of Cambridge and Sheffield Hallam University who will lead the framework design phase of the programme.
Dr Stephen Barclay, a GP and Consultant in Palliative Care from the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge, who iwll coordinate the research team said: “More and more people are living longer - there’ll be a 50% increase of people aged over 65 by 2037 - and we will often have several illnesses and complicated care needs as we reach the end of our lives.
"Many of us will live away from family members who might otherwise help to care for us and there’ll be more pressure on health and social care services. So designing a new framework for end of life care is critical work. This is a fantastic opportunity to bring heads together in a rigorous process to produce a blueprint for the future of end of life care”.
The programme will run in three phases; scoping and designing the framework, pilot and evaluation, and research and rollout.
Professor Bill Noble, Medical Director for Marie Curie and Programme Lead, said: “This programme will take a completely fresh look at how health services and society in general looks after people at the end of their lives. It will build on what we know about palliative care and combine the expertise of families with experience of terminal illness and academic experts in healthcare design to find new ways of caring.
“We are particularly excited to be working with such a diverse group of people who are eminent in their field and have a proven track record of improving services. We know that one in four people in the UK don’t get the care and support they need, so there is an urgency to act now.”
The Design to Care Programme will be funded by Marie Curie through fundraising. To find out more from the people involved in the programme watch our launch video and further information about the programme can be found here.
