Hospital gets £450,000 grant to help patients with inflammatory bowel disease in Sheffield

Inflammatory bowel disease affects around 300,000 people in the UK, 4,000 of whom are treated in Sheffield.

This means around one every 210 people in the UK suffers with some form of the disease, with Crohn’s and colitis disease the two main forms of the debilitating condition.

Now, a major new study aims to change the way the health service responds to the needs of people living with inflammatory bowel disease by putting the patient’s voice at the centre of care.

Sheffield Teaching Hospitals is one of four centres selected from over 350 national applicants and will receive £450,000 to help them design future services and improve care.

The research will be led by Professor Alan Lobo, consultant gastroenterologist at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, in partnership with the University of Sheffield and Crohn’s and Colitis UK.

He said: “This is a really exciting project which could represent a radical shift in the way groups of healthcare services engage with patients.

“As one of the largest inflammatory bowel disease centres in the country, this is also excellent news for Sheffield as we can recruit large numbers of patients and engage with a huge and diverse population.

“We will be communicating with all our patients about the study in due course, and reaching out to lesser heard voices to further understand what matters to them.”

Advances in treatments of inflammatory bowel disease have been rapid in the past few years, with more and more new drugs and affordable therapies becoming available.

This includes drugs that target the immune response and can be given to patients in hospital through a drip or at home by injection pen.

However, there remain limits on patients’ opportunities to express to healthcare staff what is important to them and to develop personalised care.

All patients attending Sheffield’s specialist inflammatory bowel centre will be invited to participate in a way that is accessible to them, including via an app which will deliver real time information to clinicians.

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