Covid Recovery

Living With’s leading Covid rehabilitation app improves a clinic’s management of post-covid patients by sixfold compared to traditional therapies: enabling services to increase capacity without compromising on outcomes.

Source: Barts Health, 2021

Co-created with experienced clinicians and researchers at UCL, Barts Health NHS Trust, UCLH, CNWL and The Royal Free, Southampton University and Exeter University.
Used in over 30 NHS Trusts and multiple ICBs
Recommended and endorsed by NHSE
Actively part of NHSE’s long covid commissioning guidelines
Currently helping more than 6,500 patients
Live since Aug 2020 and constantly updated in response to feedback (10x since launch)
After 30 days, 64% of patients are using the app at least once a week *
After 8 weeks, 40% of patients are using at least once a week *
Funded by two NIHR grants
Winner of the ‘Excellence in Patient and Public Involvement in Transformation and Innovation’ at the 2022 AHSN Innovate Awards

* Source: Barts Health, 2021

The challenge

In the UK there are more than two million patients with Long Covid and over 100 million worldwide. Research has shown that many patients have: not recovered after 7 months, not returned to their previous productivity levels, and continue to experience symptoms.

Solution

The Living With Covid Recovery provides sector-leading support to Long Covid patients and enables clinics to increase the number of patients getting high-quality treatment, simultaneously and remotely, across all aspects of the condition. It is designed to be:

Cost-effective
Adaptable to your clinical pathway
Flexible to meet the needs of different clinic setups and resources

It consolidates evidence-based methods from psychologists, respiratory physicians, physiotherapists and dieticians to form bespoke treatment plans for patients.

Living With offers 3 different and complementary Long Covid rehabilitation products which are all housed in the same app. They can be used individually or in combination depending on the patient’s needs:

Assessment only

The app only houses the Covid Recovery assessment programme with a full range of outcome measures including MRC, D12, EQ5D, PDQ-5, WSAS, FACIT-Fatigue, GAD 7, PHQ8 or PHQ9. You can use this for assessing/triaging a patient before “treatment”.

Full Living With Covid Recovery product

Enables clinics to provide higher risk patients with personalised treatment programmes to help them deal with their symptoms, whilst assessing and reviewing their progress and communicating with them remotely.

Self-management version

A reduced product without messaging and designed for lower risk patients.

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.

Service evaluations and feedback reveal that clinicians most value:

The efficiency of the platform and how it enables good quality care
The reduction to 2 or 3 minutes per patient, per week
How the patient app promotes MDT learning
The ability to take a proactive approach to spot imminent “crashes” and intervene early

“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 has been developed to treat the long-lasting symptoms of COVID-19 infection. In this video a patient shares her experience of using the app.

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.