Innovative pilot makes everyday physical activity a medicine: delivering health impact in long COVID recovery.

Health Innovation East has supported this innovative behaviour change technology by establishing a pilot scheme across the SNEE Integrated Care System.

Insight

People with long COVID often report its significant negative impact (1,2) on day-to-day life, including how it limits their capacity to undertake normal daily activities. The pilot provided access to the KiActiv^® Health service for a group of people with symptoms of long COVID, to help them understand the impact of their everyday activities on their symptoms. By improving their knowledge and understanding with personalised technology-enabled support, the expectation was that the group would enhance their self-care in the context of their condition and sustain the resulting behaviour change.

KiActiv^® participants can see how their daily habits contribute to their overall physical energy expenditure. It delivers personalised insights to help each individual to adapt their total dose of physical activity – to pace effectively, match personal goals, reduce fatigue and better manage their overall energy levels. Focussing in such a way demonstrates the value of everyday movement, which helps expand the therapy window to include all waking hours harnesses the multiple dimensions of physical activity that are each independently important to health.

Intervention

KiActiv^® combines an accurate, proprietary wearable physical activity monitor, an easy-to-use personalised online dashboard to interact with the data captured by the monitor, and the provision of one-to-one mentoring over a course of 12 weeks. By rethinking exercise and making personalised everyday physical activity a medicine, it is accessible to everyone and doesn’t require visits to clinics or gyms.

Since August 2022, 433 people have self-referred to KiActiv^® having been signposted SNEE Post-COVID Assessment Service (PCS)

Sarah Fowler, Clinical Lead for Suffolk and North East Essex PCS service, said:

‘Our collaborative approach has enabled a rapid and efficient roll-out for people using our service. Coding our patients has allowed us to understand where in our pathway patients are utilising KiActiv. Patients are seeing measurable benefits from the programme and tell us that it is meaningfully supporting their recovery.’

Health Innovation East supported KiActiv by establishing a pilot scheme across SNEE ICS. Lamprini Kaftantzi, PhD, from Health Innovation East said:

‘Our team is excited to have helped KiActiv become further embedded in the NHS and support the recovery of people with long COVID symptoms. The combination of quantitative and qualitative outcome data has shown strong patient satisfaction, clinically meaningful patient reported outcomes, and statistically significant improvements in their capacity to carry out normal daily activities.’

Impact

Reporting in a poster to the National Long Covid Conference in March 2024, when 95 people had completed the 12-week KiActiv programme, the team were able to share impressive initial findings from the pilot.

• 79% of people said they were able to improve their everyday physical activity On average, people experienced a total additional dose of everyday physical activity equating to more than 34 hours across the 12 weeks.
• 84% of people said they had improved their overall quality of life, with more than half improving their mental wellbeing, or their ability to manage fatigue.
• 53% of people improved their mental wellbeing.

Patients also reported positive experiences from the programme. It helped them improve mobility and strength, improved their confidence and energy levels, and reduced pain and breathlessness.

‘The programme was simple and easy to use. it seamlessly fitted into my work/life schedule and I felt fully supported and guided throughout.

‘Whereas I used to put myself under pressure to try and incorporate exercise into to my daily routine, I now have a better understanding of the benefit and importance of being active throughout the entire day. This has not only been life changing with regards to my physical health, but even more so for my mental health.’

In November 2024, with 304 people having completed the programme, KiActiv^® reported to SNEE ICS that its technology has now

• Shown an in-year return of investment of £9 for every pound spent.
• Collected over 34,000 days of personalised physical activity data, over 3,000 daily symptom tracking and behavioural reports, and over 900 hours of Mentor calls with individual participant insights.
• Seen 81% of people continue to use KiActiv^® beyond the initial 12-week programme.
• Shown statistically significant improvements in quality of life, mental wellbeing and self-efficacy to manage chronic fatigue on average across the group.
• Seen 92% of people say that they would recommend KiActiv^® to friends & family.

SNEE ICS has chosen to extend the KiActiv^® programme following these encouraging results, and strong support from NHS staff and patients.

Additionally, KiActiv is currently deployed in 13 NHS ICS regions, supporting an array of healthcare pathways – supporting long-term conditions, self-care in primary/community care, rehabilitation pathways in secondary care and fatigue-centred services such as Long COVID. The innovation is condition-agnostic solution that contributes to the governments renewed focus on moving from treatment to prevention.

To find out more about KiActiv contact lamprini.kaftantzi@healthinnovationeast.co.uk. To learn how Health Innovation East supports innovators reach out to innovator visit our website