Health Technology Wales joins key Welsh Government groups responding to COVID-19
We’ve joined a Welsh Government led consortium of stakeholders to deliver the national plan for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) testing.
This consortium includes Public Health Wales, health boards, Shared Services Partnership, NHS Wales Informatics Service, Life Sciences Hub, Genomics Partnership Wales and academic partners.
Testing is a vital part of how we are working to protect the public, optimise the outcomes for our patients and keep essential services running in Wales. The national plan for COVID-19 testing has two key objectives;
- to reduce the harm caused by COVID-19
- to help the public and professionals get back to their normal daily lives.
The Welsh national COVID-19 test approach works alongside the UK Testing Strategy.
We’ve asked the testing group to identify priority COVID-19 related technology topics that require rapid turnaround. We’re producing Topic Exploration Reports (TERs) for these technologies. TERs are used to understand the base of evidence behind a technology and enable evidence-based decision making.
Several COVID-19 related TERs have already been published on our website, including;
- Point-of-care smartphone applications (ResAppDx-EU) for the diagnosis of acute respiratory disease
- Cytokine adsorbers for the treatment of cytokine storm in people with severe coronavirus infection.
We’re also a part of the Welsh Government’s COVID-19 Research Cell that is sharing intelligence and coordinating connections into UK wide processes for research. Our work is focusing on synthesising the emerging evidence for COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics, including a regularly updated COVID-19 evidence digest.
Visit www.healthtechnology.wales/covid-19 for more information on the research services we’re providing to our partners in health and social care.
