The funding is part of a £7.8 million investment 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 (NICE).
Many digital tools exist to support people with low back pain to self-manage their symptoms. However, it’s not known 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 their 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 project aims to assess if using getUBetter improves pain, and the patients’ ability to engage with daily activities, reduces the need for further care, and whether it offers the NHS good value for money.
The 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.
Dr Alice Berry, Active Lives HIT co-director,, Associate Professor in Rehabilitation at UWE Bristol and lead for the project, said:
“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.”
Dr Erik Lenguerrand, Senior Lecturer in Medical Statistics and Quantitative Epidemiologist and Dr Joanna Thorn, Senior Research Fellow in Health Economics in the Bristol Medical School at the University of Bristol, and collaborators on the project, added:
“This is a fantastic project that combines the strengths of Bristol’s two universities to assess the effectiveness of a digital health technology aimed to improve back pain.”
The ‘Clinical and cost-effectiveness of digital technology for low back pain’ project is one of 7 newly funded research projects by the NIHR aimed at bringing new technologies into the NHS to benefit patients.
The funded research 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.
For more information on the funding and 7 projects, see: NIHR and OLS invest £7.8m in new technology to benefit patients
