nir-vana innovation network

Current evidence suggests approximately 10-20% of people experience a variety of mid and long-term effects of COVID-19 after their initial illness (World Health Organisation, March 2023) Long Covid is estimated to affect 2 million people in the U.K. alone (3% of the population), with over 400,000 out of work as a result of the condition. More generally, 70% of healthcare utilisation in the NHS is spent on long-term conditions. The University of Leeds were the first in the world to develop and validate a condition-specific outcome measure for assessing and monitoring Long Covid which has been adopted globally and recommended by NHS England, NHS Scotland, NICE, and other national guidance worldwide (Canada, Chile etc.). They were also the first to develop a specialist service for Long Covid patients which is considered the benchmark model service for all UK services to follow. This UK SME has partnered with this university to develop a faster, simpler, secure digital platform which incorporates this Long Covid tool, amongst several other features and functionalities to support clinics with the remote assessment, triage, monitoring, management, and rehabilitation of patients with long Covid and many other long-term conditions, as well as research into new therapies and studies on the condition. The patient web or mobile app and clinical web portal has been adapted from an established CE-marked medical device digital platform to launch this system across the UK and the international healthcare sector. As a result of thorough clinical use into the usability and feasibility of the original CE-marked system, this simpler system is considered easy to use, discrete and enables powerful reporting tools for the management of large patient cohorts in clinics and the monitoring of their rehabilitation and recovery trajectories. This innovative way of setting up patients to record their assessment, diagnosing and triage of patients with long COVID symptoms has been designed with clinicians to be integrated into GP practices, specialist COVID service providers, community health and acute trusts to support organisations better deploy, evidence and account for the complex mix of resources utilised for long COVID patients. The platform is being used by more than 60 NHS organisations in the U.K., including all the Scottish clinical Long Covid network as part of a national rollout. It is used to conduct national service evaluations in both England and Scotland, as well as driving large scale national research across 11 clinics simultaneously as part of a government-funded project in the U.K., and a small-scale study in Australia. The SME is looking for healthcare organisations or companies globally with connections to local authorities who can provide assistance and local know-how to the company to enable them to enter the market. They are looking to do this via a commercial agency agreement and or a distribution services agreement.