Nearly 700 care homes have joined the Vivaldi Social Care Project which will create a system connecting lists of care home residents with routine data sets already held by the NHS, including hospital admissions, mortality data, immunisations, laboratory test results, and prescriptions, allowing a comprehensive view of residents’ health.

Summerlands care home in West Sussex, with manager Lowela Alcazaren second from right, became the first to join the 12-month pilot study
Insights from this data can then be used to improve care homes’ strategies against outbreaks like this winter’s “quad-demic” of Covid-19, flu, norovirus and RSV infections, as well as urinary tract infections (UTIs).
Thousands of people have been hospitalised this winter after all four viruses struck but the research project, co-led by a team at University College London (UCL), promises to reduce the impact of outbreaks and improve quality of life for residents.
It could not be more timely as latest NHS England figures, published on Thursday, revealed norovirus hospital cases had hit a record high. Some 1,160 hospital beds on average were filled daily last week with patients displaying norovirus-like symptoms, including diarrhoea and vomiting – an increase of 22 per cent compared to the week before, with 948 people in hospital each day on average with the virus.
Although most patients can often take care of themselves at home, the elderly are at greater risk of suffering more serious and prolonged illness. Last month, the UK Health Security Agency said norovirus cases in England are currently more than double the expected number for this time of year, increasing the risk of outbreaks in care homes.
In the longer term, the project aims to facilitate clinical trials in care homes, for instance trials of norovirus and RSV vaccines. Until now, care home residents have largely been excluded from clinical trials, despite them often having the most to gain from new treatments.
Ms Meacock said: “What happened with my mother is why this project is so important, because if you can help how infections are looked at, how they’re prevented, how they’re controlled, how care homes – which are unique settings – care for their residents but also protect their carers and staff and keep the doors open for those essential family visits, then that is groundbreaking it really is.”
Summerlands care home in Haywards Heath, West Sussex, was the first to join the project. Manager Lowela Alcazaren said the home has been “really lucky” this winter and not been hit by the quad-demic, but nearby care homes have lost residents.
“Of course, you never know what will happen as it only takes one person to come in and spread a virus. It’s still stressful for me as a manager, because I don’t want what happened in the pandemic to ever happen again,” she said.
“We didn’t lose anyone during Covid but some of the care homes near us lost half their residents. It was so painful for those managers who had to tell so many relatives that their loved ones had died. It was a nightmare every day for me, so stressful, and affected me a lot as a manager.
“We were really left on our own, especially at the beginning of the pandemic because we just didn’t know what we were facing. I really don’t know how we all survived.”
Sue Curnock waited until the worst of the pandemic was over before finding a home for her mother Dee, 93, and now a Summerlands resident, as the family did not want to leave her in a home only to be unable to visit. Curnock’s uncle was already in a care home when Covid struck and she was forced to try and speak with him through a window.
“He was hard of hearing and the microphone never worked. It was just a nightmare. My husband’s mum was also in a care home and she died alone because we weren’t allowed to be there when she died, which was dreadful. He has to live with that,” Ms Curnock said.

Sue Curnock, right, with her 93-year-old mother Dee, a Summerlands resident.
The project funded by the UK Health Security Agency and the National Institute for Health and Care Research, is carried out in collaboration with The Outstanding Society, Care England, and NHS England.
It follows on from the Vivaldi study on Covid-19 in care homes, co-led by the same UCL team, which played a crucial role during the pandemic, helping inform decisions on limiting staff movement between care homes to reduce infection risk and highlighted the need for sick pay for care home workers.
Principal investigator Professor Laura Shallcross, from UCL’s Institute of Health Informatics, said it will be a world first.
“We’ve designed it so the care homes are not collecting the data, as they don’t have the time, but pulling the information from electronic care records so it tells us who is in a care home on any given day – that’s a critical piece of information that doesn’t exist anywhere,” she said.
“If one care home is particularly good at managing urine infections, what are they doing well and how can we share best practice across all care homes. Equally, our ambition is then about using this network of data to do more complex research studies, such as clinical trials on how well new vaccines work on care home residents.