For researchers and academics

For researchers

Study design, methods, work packages, and opportunities for collaboration. Outputs will be added as they emerge.

Study at a glance

CARE-PAC is being developed through a three-year, National Institute for Health and Care Research-funded product development award running February 2026 – January 2029. It combines a structured co-production phase, iterative system development, and a multi-site randomised controlled trial, alongside parallel health-economic and implementation work streams designed to support real-world adoption.

Research questions

CARE-PAC addresses three principal questions:

  1. Does a co-produced digital remote monitoring and support system improve symptom burden, quality of life, and patterns of healthcare utilisation for people with life-limiting illness?
  2. Does the same system improve the experience and reduce the unmet needs of informal carers and patients?
  3. Is the system cost-effective and feasible to integrate into routine UK palliative and end-of-life care pathways?

Methods

The CARE-PAC methods as a circle of four numbered strands around the CARE-PAC logo. 1, Co-production: the project is developed in close partnership with patients receiving palliative care, their family members and carers, and palliative care professionals throughout its lifecycle, with activities run flexibly and compassionately to accommodate fluctuating symptoms, energy levels, and circumstances, helping ensure the service is acceptable, dignified, and genuinely responsive to people approaching the end of life and those who support them. 2, Randomised controlled trial: an RCT will evaluate the effectiveness of the new monitoring service compared with usual care, recruiting 200 eligible participants randomly allocated to the monitoring service or the control group, with outcome measures covering symptom burden, quality of life, unplanned healthcare contacts such as emergency admissions, and carer wellbeing, conducted to relevant ethical and regulatory standards with a pre-specified statistical analysis plan. 3, Health economics: an economic evaluation alongside the trial will assess the cost-effectiveness of the monitoring service relative to usual palliative care, collecting data on healthcare resource use including community, hospital, and emergency contacts alongside quality-of-life and wellbeing measures suited to a palliative population, to estimate the potential to reduce avoidable hospital admissions and support patients' care choices. 4, Implementation: an implementation strategy will support adoption of the monitoring service into routine palliative care provision, engaging hospice, community, and specialist palliative care teams to understand practical barriers and enablers, including workforce, technological, and resourcing considerations, aiming to improve early identification and enable timely, person-centred support for patients and families.
The CARE-PAC methods, across four strands.

Open science commitments

  • Trial pre-registration in a public registry (ISRCTN or equivalent) ahead of recruitment.
  • Protocol and statistical analysis plan published prior to first analysis.
  • Open-access publication of primary outputs where licensing permits.
  • Plain-English summaries of every output, co-authored with our Lived Experience Group.

Working with us

We welcome collaboration with researchers in digital health, palliative care, health-services research, health economics, behavioural science, and implementation science. Specific opportunities include affiliated PhD and postdoctoral projects, secondary analyses, and methods exchange across cognate trials.

Want to be involved?

Whether you are a clinician interested in trial sites, a researcher exploring collaboration, or a patient or carer who would like a voice in shaping the system, we would love to hear from you.

Contact the team

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