getUBetter, in collaboration with UWE Bristol and Bristol, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire Integrated Care Board, and partners the University of Bristol and St George’s University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, has won funding to evaluate the implementation of their musculoskeletal self-management app.
Low back pain affects many people in the UK, restricting their daily activities and accounting for 5% of GP appointments. Many digital tools exist to support people with low back pain to self-manage their symptoms. However, we don’t know how they work for patients and healthcare professionals, and whether they provide good care.
The getUBetter app is already used by the NHS to support people with low back pain. Typically, patients are directed to the app by their doctor, GP practice staff, or physiotherapist. A simple registration process connects them to guidance and support throughout the recovery journey, providing them with advice about symptoms, information about what to expect, relevant exercises, goal-setting tools, and referral to local treatments and services.
The funding comes from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Invention for Innovation (i4i) Programme, in collaboration with the Office for Life Sciences and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. NIHR have funded seven new projects aimed at bringing new technologies into the NHS to benefit patients.
The funded teams will be gathering real-world evidence for their products. This will help to accelerate adoption of these technologies, which have been recommended for early use in the NHS through NICE Early Value Assessment.
The funding aims to help make the UK a leading testbed for late-stage health innovations. It will allow researchers and companies to generate the evidence needed to achieve full NICE guidance, and to accelerate uptake in the NHS so that patients can benefit sooner.
This project aims to assess if using getUBetter improves pain, and the ability to engage with daily activities, reduces the need for further care, and whether it offers the NHS good value for money. This research will help to understand how the app is being used by patients and GP practices and develop guidance on how getUBetter and other digital self-management tools can be used to support patients with low back pain.
Health Innovation West of England will support the evaluation around knowledge transfer, running workshops with key stakeholders involved in the project to translate learning and insights into generalisable knowledge for wider adoption and spread.
Dr Alice Berry, Associate Professor in Rehabilitation at UWE Bristol and lead for the project commented: “We are very excited to be leading this work and to receive NIHR funding and support from the Office of Life Sciences to broaden understanding of how digital technologies can be utilised by the NHS.”
Read more about the NIHR i4i funding here.
Posted on December 5, 2024
News you may like
Connect – Innovate – Transform: Health Innovation West of England Conference 2024
On Wednesday 13 November, health and care innovators, industry leaders and visionaries from across the West of England and beyond came together at UWE Bristol’s Enterprise Park for our one-day conference. The theme of the day was ‘Connect, Innovate, Transform’ and offered an opportunity for delegates to make connections across our local health and care…
Read more
The Innovation Zone
Last month, we brought together health and care leaders and innovators to connect and collaborate at our conference, where we had a dedicated Innovation Zone with a carefully curated showcase of 20 cutting-edge solutions and services, leading the way in health and care innovation. Delegates got to meet the innovators and learn more about an…
Read more
Connection and collaboration for innovation: How can we better support health and care systems to adopt and spread proven innovations?
The final panel discussion in the Innovation Zone at our conference last month focussed on the deployment stage of an innovation’s journey to adoption and spread across health and care systems. The conversation was chaired by our Deputy Director of Programmes, Dave Evans, and the panellists were: Carey McClellan, CEO and Founder of getUBetter Verena…
Read more
