Covid Recovery

Our Covid digital rehabilitation product is live in Barts Health, CNWL, Solent, Southern Health and Isle of Wight, NELFT and Homerton NHS Trusts; and going live in a number of other hospitals shortly.

We have packaged up life-changing clinical input into an app and are providing it to patients through our existing remote condition management platform, to help them recover safely and comfortably from home.

It will evolve continuously over the next 12 months as it learns from the data and the use of AI.

We are working in close partnership with a team of UCL health researchers and computer scientists, UCLPartners, Barts Health NHS Trust, UCLH, CNWL, University of Southampton and the University of Exeter. Please also see here for more details about our Living With Covid Recovery programme on the UCL website.

The challenge

Over 550,000 people had been infected by COVID19 in the UK by the second week of October 2020. For many of those that survive however, this is only the start of their journey to recovery.

It is clear that COVID19 survivors still suffer from debilitating symptoms of tiredness, breathlessness and anxiety many weeks and months after the peak of their infection – a group often known as the COVID19 ‘long-haulers’.

Understandably hospitals are limiting bringing patients in for face-to-face appointments to stop further spread of infection but there isn’t enough clinical resource to support individual patients across this range of symptoms after they have been discharged.

When they do seek help, patients often still have trouble remembering to do their exercises and often miss or skip appointments.

This results in it often taking longer to see the desired improvements in outcomes, DNAs are increased and the treatment cycle is unnecessarily lengthened.

Our solution

Our Covid Recovery product combines evidence-based methods from physiotherapists, psychologists, dieticians and respiratory physicians to create bespoke treatment plans for each patient, whilst enabling clinicians to review patient progress and communicate with them remotely.

The programme includes an app for patients providing tailored advice, treatment plans and suggested exercises, and also supports clinicians with a dashboard to review patient progress and communicate, and a clinical pathway for how to provide safe, remote support.

The first version of the rehabilitation tool targeted three primary on-going symptoms being reported – fatigue, anxiety and breathing problems but subsequent versions are targeting neurological problems, depression, taste and smell and other prevalent symptoms.

There is an exciting roadmap of iterative development of the existing Covid Recovery product to meet new needs every two months. This includes making increasing use of data to drive more intelligent and personalised digital programmes for patients. We are aiming to make significant improvements in patient outcomes.

Results

A significant number of patients continue to have a high symptom burden for many months after their acute COVID-19, with associated deterioration in quality of life. The product is providing a more efficient way for clinicians to manage patients remotely and asynchronously than the traditional patient review. It is allowing successful triage according to symptoms and identification of patients who need more specialist support.

“The proportion of people needing further help is really high. We’re finding that half of the patients we discharge from hospital, are still experiencing significant symptoms after three months. There are simply not enough staff and resources to reach everyone recovering from COVID-19 who are in need of using traditional models of care, such as face-to-face appointments. This tool allows us to provide high-quality treatment to large numbers of patients simultaneously.”

Respiratory physician Dr Paul Pfeffer, Barts Health NHS Trust

“Issues that arise post-COVID are multi-factoral and often debilitating. For each person we are able to take a holistic approach to their treatment and provide a personalised plan via the tool, including frequent monitoring and ongoing communication.”

Physiotherapist Hannah Hylton, St Bartholomew’s Hospital

“The mental health component of the digital tool is just as important as the physical, and we are finding that the symptoms are often interrelated – for instance, if you’re feeling anxious you may be less likely to eat well, which may lead to further tiredness, which further impacts your mood and so on. A core feature of the recovery tool is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) delivered by psychologists to help with anxiety.”

Psychologist Dr Stuart Linke, UCL Primary Care and Population Health and Camden and Islington Mental Health NHS Trust

Living With Covid Recovery article in the i

Article in the i: Long Covid: Digital treatment programme rolled out in hospitals to help patients with chronic illness

“You can see week by week you are getting better. It’s helped to see how you’ve improved because sometimes it’s not easy to see how you are feeling.”

Barts Health Patient

UCL Living With COVID recovery programme

Professor of e-health at UCL, Elizabeth Murray describes how the Living WIth COVID recovery programme is helping trusts manage large numbers of long COVID patients efficiently and with tailored care and support.

Request a demo

Get in touch to book a demo where we’ll walk you through the Living With Covid Recovery software, discuss how it could integrate into staff workflows and identify ways it can support efficiencies in your clinic.