Researchers receive share of £7.8 million funding to evaluate digital self-management app for low back pain

A person sitting down holding their lower back

Image by Arpit from Pixabay

Press release issued: 26 November 2024

Low back pain affects many people in the UK, restricting their daily activities and accounting for 5 per cent of GP appointments. Researchers from the University of Bristol, UWE Bristol and St George’s University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, in collaboration with the Bristol, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire Integrated Care Board and getUBetter, have secured funding of over £1.3 million to evaluate the implementation of the musculoskeletal self-management app, getUBetter.

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, Associate Professor in Rehabilitation at UWE Bristol and lead for the project, sad: “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

Further information

About the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR)
The mission of the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) is to improve the health and wealth of the nation through research. We do this by:

Funding high quality, timely research that benefits the NHS, public health and social care;
Investing in world-class expertise, facilities and a skilled delivery workforce to translate discoveries into improved treatments and services;
Partnering with patients, service users, carers and communities, improving the relevance, quality and impact of our research;
Attracting, training and supporting the best researchers to tackle complex health and social care challenges;
Collaborating with other public funders, charities and industry to help shape a cohesive and globally competitive research system;
Funding applied global health research and training to meet the needs of the poorest people in low- and middle-income countries.

NIHR is funded by the Department of Health and Social Care. Its work in low and middle income countries is principally funded through UK Aid from the UK government.