A Look into the Long-Term Effects of COVID-19 with GENEActiv

The Post-Hospitalisation COVID-19 study (PHOSP-COVID) is a UK wide research programme being led by the NIHR Leicester Biomedical Research Centre into the long-term health outcomes of patients who were hospitalised with COVID-19.

The consortium consists of leading researchers and clinicians across the UK, bringing together combined knowledge and expertise to reach solutions for these patients. The key focus of the study looks at analysing and building solutions for patients following discharge from hospital with clinician suspected COVID-19, and whether there are long-term effects on their health. The research will address gaps around the ongoing effects of the disease. The aim is to understand what the optimal continued medical, psychological and rehabilitation needs for this group of patients will be to enable them to make as full a recovery as possible.

The study will involve 10,000 individuals across all backgrounds that were hospitalised with COVID-19 throughout the UK.

Activinsights technologies are being used within the programme to facilitate building a comprehensive picture of the impact of COVID-19 on patient’s daily lives and health outcomes. The GENEActiv collects continuous patient lifestyle data outside of a clinical environment. Remote patient monitoring will be carried out for one year with minimal burden for the patient, providing high-quality behavioural data.

The raw data collected is valuable to working groups to enable detailed analysis and understand behaviours or patterns across a broad range of measurements over a long period of time, throughout the patient’s recovery. This supports the PHOSP-COVID team in developing new strategies for clinical care, including personalised treatments and interventions for different groups of patients based on the specific disease characteristics they show as a result of having COVID-19, to improve their long-term health.

The PHOSP-COVID team are working closely with COVID-19 intervention trials such as the RECOVERY trial to understand the impacts of interventions in these patients. This will help the team analyse treatments that were given in the hospital and how they can alter outcomes after the patient has gone home for improved recovery. This will help gain a better understanding into the recovery of COVID-19 and identify any further solutions that might positively change the course of the disease and reduce the burden of long-term COVID-19 on patients.

PHOSP-COVID is a national effort led by University of Leicester, who have made a great start on addressing gaps within post-hospitalisation research. The ambition is to properly understand the magnitude of that affecting patients post-hospitalisation and even more importantly being able to make a difference to those patients who have suffered from a COVID-19 infection.

Read more about the study or check out our other COVID-19 scientifically-validated publications.