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Acutelines

Hospital-based biobank to facilitate acute care and emergency research. Cohort
Hospital-based biobank to facilitate acute care and emergency research.
Research in acute care faces many challenges, such as enrolment challenges, legal restrictions on data sharing, lack of single ‘ownership’ of the domain of acute care, and the absence of integrated data about the patient journey in acute care, from the onset of the acute disease to well after hospital discharge.

To overcome these challenges, we have established a novo biobank for acute and emergency medicine: Acutelines.

Acutelines aims to: 

  • facilitate research in acute and emergency medicine, by providing the framework for novel clinical studies;
  • facilitate translational research in order to develop acute personalized medicine, by providing data, images, and biomaterials;
  • monitor and improve quality of care in acute and emergency medicine.

The Acutelines infographic gives a visual representation of what we do.

  • Participants have to meet at least one of the following criteria in order to be eligible for inclusion:

    • patients in the highest and second-highest urgency triage categories (red, orange) of the Emergency Severity Index (ESI);
    • patients in the third-highest urgency triage category (yellow) of the ESI when arriving by HEMS transport;
    • patients with several specific conditions, regardless of the urgency triage category that they are in: early sepsis, shock, syncope, anaphylaxis, acute renal failure, electrolyte disturbances intoxications, COPD and asthma exacerbations, actual or suspected deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism, gastrointestinal bleeding, and bleeding from any source while using vitamin K antagonists or DOACs.

    You can send a request for more information using the Request Acutelines information form.

  • Please visit the UMCG Research Data Catalogue for more detailed information on our data and samples.

    Samples will be collected prior to the start of treatment, as soon as possible after presentation. A deferred proxy consent procedure is in place to allow the collection of data and biomaterials before having obtained written consent. Clinical data, imaging data and biomaterials (blood, urine, faeces, and hair) will be collected. The digital infrastructure used ensures the automated capturing of all bedside monitoring data (vital parameters and electrophysiological waveforms), and the secure import of data from other sources, such as the electronic health records drawn up by the hospital staff, ambulance staff, general practitioner, the municipal registration, and the pharmacy. 

    Clinical data

    • reason for admission, including signs and symptoms;
    • physical examination and vital parameters (e.g. body temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, breathing frequency);
    • general characteristics (e.g. judgment of treating physician);
    • additional results (e.g. X-ray images, scans, ultrasound scans, laboratory test results);
    • pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic treatment.

    Questionnaires

    • demographic data (e.g. age, sex, marital status, education, living situation, ethnicity);
    • family history;
    • lifestyle (e.g. smoking, alcohol consumption, illicit drug use);
    • global functioning and experienced health (e.g. EQ-5D-5L, Katz-15 scale, Piper Fatigue Scale-12, PHQ-15);
    • mood (e.g. PHQ-2, PHQ-9, GDS-15);
    • shared decision-making (e.g. PSQ-18, OPT);
    • nutrition and activity (e.g. SNAQ, MUST, SQUASH);
    • frailty, delirium and cognitive functioning (e.g. VMS frail older patients, 4-AT, 6-CIT).

    Biomaterials

    • serum;
    • citrate plasma;
    • EDTA plasma + buffy coat (DNA);
    • heparin plasma;
    • whole blood (PAXgene RNA extraction);
    • urine;
    • faeces;
    • lock of hair.
  • Please visit Acutelines: data- en biobank voor ontstaan en behandeling van acute aandoeningen for more information about participation (in Dutch).

Relevance

How Acutelines benefits to society

We prospectively include adult patients (aged ≥ 18 years) visiting the emergency department who are being referred to healthcare professionals from internal medicine, nephrology, geriatric medicine, oncology, haematology, pulmonology, rheumatology, gastroenterology and hepatology or emergency medicine (non-trauma). Emergency nurses and trained research assistants screen all patients’ eligibility for inclusion in Acutelines and collection of their data and biomaterials.

Contact

Hjalmar Bouma
Hjalmar Bouma Internist acute medicine, pharmacologist, immunologist

University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG)
Acutelines
PO Box 30.001
9700 RB Groningen
The Netherlands

Visiting address
University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG)
Department of Emergency medicine (non-trauma)
Antonius Deusinglaan 1
9713 AV Groningen