LumenEye during CovID-19 (LuCID study)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
LumenEye during CovID-19 (LuCID study)
IRAS ID
285758
Contact name
James Kinross
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Imperial College London
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 7 months, 28 days
Research summary
The COVID-19 pandemic has exerted significant pressure on all NHS resources and capacity. This has been so significant that operations and treatments for planned care have been cancelled and it is now possible that many millions of patients could come to harm as a direct result of delayed diagnoses. The need for rapid innovation and new ways of increasing capacity within the NHS have been identified as key to tackling the COVID-19 challenge.
The NHS performs 6.7 million consultations with people with gastrointestinal complaints in outpatient departments annually, and over 900,000 endoscopies (telescopic examination of the bowel). Endoscopy is thought to pose a particularly heightened risk of covid-19 transmission to healthcare staff as it uses compressed air which is dispersed during the procedure. Therefore, on recommendation from the UK Government, all but essential endoscopies have been cancelled. During the pandemic many patients with chronic conditions are unable to receive appropriate care and rates of new bowel cancer diagnoses are falling, which means many are being left undiagnosed.
This project will deploy and evaluate a new point-of-care medical endoscope called the LumenEye and a tele-endoscopy programme called CHiP which permits a doctor to view images remotely. With this technology, patients can undergo endoscopic procedures during the pandemic and access specialist opinions safely without exposing the doctors to Covid or patients to hospital.
The goal is to understand if the intervention is safe, can provide adequate information to guide treatment, can be used in less experienced hands like primary care workers and can protect patients from exposure to Covid-19 by keeping them out of hospital.
This highly innovative project will establish proof-of-concept and serve as the basis for further research to understand if specialist "digital" clinics can bring benefits to patients and reduce the reliance on endoscopy departments to deliver such services.REC name
West Midlands - South Birmingham Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
20/WM/0221
Date of REC Opinion
10 Sep 2020
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion