Validated frailty measures using electronic primary care records: a review of diagnostic test accuracy

Identification of people who have or are at risk of frailty enables targeted interventions, and the use of tools that screen for frailty using electronic records (which we term as validated electronic frailty measures (VEFMs)) within primary care is incentivised by NHS England. We carried out a systematic review to establish the sensitivity and specificity of available primary care VEFMs when compared to a reference standard in-person assessment.

Medline, Pubmed, CENTRAL, CINHAL and Embase searches identified studies comparing a primary care VEFM with in-person assessment. Studies were quality assessed using Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies revised tool. Sensitivity and specificity values were extracted or were calculated and pooled using StatsDirect.

There were 2,245 titles screened, with 10 studies included. These described three different index tests: electronic frailty index (eFI), claims-based frailty index (cFI) and polypharmacy. Frailty Phenotype was the reference standard in each study. One study of 60 patients examined the eFI, reporting a sensitivity of 0.84 (95% CI = 0.55, 0.98) and a specificity of 0.78 (0.64, 0.89). Two studies of 7,679 patients examined cFI, with a pooled sensitivity of 0.48 (95% CI = 0.23, 0.74) and a specificity of 0.80 (0.53, 0.98). Seven studies of 34,328 patients examined a polypharmacy as a screening tool (defined as more than or equal to five medications) with a pooled sensitivity of 0.61 (95% CI = 0.50, 0.72) and a specificity of 0.66 (0.58, 0.73).

eFI is the best-performing VEFM; however, based on our analysis of an average UK GP practice, it would return a high number of false-positive results. In conclusion, existing electronic frailty tools may not be appropriate for primary care-based population screening.