QRISK benefits from NICE decision

Demand for QRISK software has increased following The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence’s decision to drop its backing for the Framingham score as the tool of choice for cardiovascular risk estimation.

The creators of QRISK said that it was experiencing a “marked increase in demand” following the change in the NICE guidance last month.

A spokesperson for QRESARCH also told EHI Primary Care that QRISK would be made available imminently as open source software.

NICE decided to withdraw its recommendation that the Framingham risk equation should be the equation of choice because of the publication last year of more evidence comparing QRISK with other risk estimation tools.

However, it said there was no consensus among members that there was sufficient new evidence to allow for a clear decision recommending one CVD risk estimation method over another.

Instead it said the decision was taken to withdraw the guidance recommending Framingham as the tool of choice, and said the decision should be left to the NHS locally to use the method best suited to their requirements.

QRISK is the result of research using the QRESERARCH database, a not for profit partnership between healthcare system supplier EMIS and Nottingham University.

A spokesperson for QRESARCH told EHI Primary Care that it welcomed the decision to give clinicians a free choice of the most appropriate CVD risk assessment tool, including QRISK2.

She added: “We are continuing to experience strong interest in the QRISK2 tool, which is more accurate for our ethnically diverse UK population and we have seen a marked increase in demand since the change in the NICE guidance.”

The QRISK2 software is available within EMIS systems and the QRESEARCH spokesperson said the software had also now been adopted by “almost all” of the leading GP system suppliers.

She added: “This is means that it is or will soon be widely available to the vast majority of working GPs as part of their existing clinical systems or as bolt-ons. In addition, a number of pharmacies have licensed software which also enables the transmission of data directly into the GP clinical systems.”

She said the freely available web calculators for QRISK at www.wqrisk.org and www.qintervention.org have had more than 160,000 hits.