Introduction

An important aspect of how the L.A.S.S.O. could be usefully implemented into society was to understand the associated costs. Hence we constructed several financial models. We started by following the assumption that the Lung Ranger, and more specifically the implemented L.A.S.S.O., would yield faster, quantitative bacterial load readings than is possible with the present testing procedure. This would lead to faster treatment and thus create a healthier CF community requiring less hospital treatment. We used the data available from the CF Registry 2013 Annual Report and investigated the amount of time CF patients spend on IV treatment at home and at the hospital. We then introduced three test hypotheses: successful implementation of the L.A.S.S.O. could decrease the IV treatment duration by 10%, 30% and 50%, respectively. Following through with this idea we were able to see the impact this had with regards to the scale of the CF patient community, the UK National Health Service (NHS) and ‘UK PLC’.

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Models

The CF patients remained at the core of our project; during our visits to the clinics, many patients expressed that they would rather continue treatment at home than in hospital when possible. This would help to minimise disruption to their working lives, the feeling of isolation in hospital and help to give patients some autonomy over their condition. Thus, we wanted to quantify the number of days a typical member of the CF community was absent from work/school for hospital IV treatment on an annual basis. We constructed two models; one based on the paediatric CF patients, Fig 1, and one based on those aged 16 or above in employment or full time study, Fig 2.

Finally, to investigate the implementation of the L.A.S.S.O. on the scale of the UK we considered the hours off work CF patients had to take due to IV treatment and the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). We considered the GDP per person of the UK which is £22,336² along with the average number of hours worked annually per employee in the UK; 1,669 hours³. From this we were able to estimate the average contribution of a person towards the GDP per hour, which was £13.38. Currently due to IV treatment the hours off work that CF patients are missing contribute to a loss in £26M to the UK GDP. From this we considered the possible recovered contribution in GDP based on our L.A.S.S.O. hypotheses, Fig 4.

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Conclusions

If the LASSO could be successfully implemented at reasonable cost, the saving to the NHS and the wider financial benefits to society would be significant. However, most importantly, the successful implementation of a rapid diagnostic testing device, would allow mature CF patients to play a far greater and more active role in the workplace and those of school age to take full advantage of their educational and social opportunities.