LumiraDx Care Solutions – the home of INRstar and engage – supported the AF Association’s Global AF Awareness Week, which ran from 20 November to 26 November.
Run by the Atrial Fibrillation (AF) Association, AF Awareness Week celebrated its tenth anniversary this year.
AF is a disturbance of the rhythm of the heart that occurs in around 2% of the population. LumiraDx Care Solutions held a fundraising ‘coffee and cakes’ morning on Thursday 23 November, raising awareness of the condition with educational materials on AF and the importance of knowing one’s pulse. The event raised £250.00 for the AF Association and 34 pulse checks were taken.
This year’s campaign highlights that AF can be detected cheaply and easily with a simple manual pulse check. About 1 in 4 people will develop AF, which affects an estimated 1.5 million across the UK and in excess of 16 million worldwide. Every 15 seconds someone suffers an AF-related stroke, yet most can be prevented using appropriate anticoagulation therapy. AF and AF-related illness costs the NHS over £2.2 billion each year.
Trudie Lobban MBE, Founder and CEO of AF Association says: “This year for our tenth anniversary during the AF Association’s Global AF Aware Week we focused on identifying the undiagnosed person with AF. Our aim is to make people aware of AF, and how a simple pulse rhythm check can help identify those people at risk of AF-related stroke, the most debilitating and life threatening of all strokes, during the week. We can only do this with the help of our supporters across the UK and we are so pleased that LumiraDx Care Solutions held an event during the week.”
Dr Mark Sullivan, Medical Director at LumiraDx Care Solutions says: “We are delighted to be supporting this fantastic charity in this really important campaign. We want to help raise awareness of these simple checks that can identify AF for the half million people in the UK with undiagnosed AF.”
INRstar assists clinicians with the management of patients on anticoagulation therapy in over 2,700 NHS locations across the UK. LumiraDx Care Solutions’ engage app allows care teams to stay in touch with their patients and supports people on long-term anticoagulation medication to lead a more independent life, with fewer visits to clinics. engage provides a series of self-care programmes and was “Highly Commended” in the Best Healthcare App category of the Building Better Healthcare Awards, November 2017.