D REACH-HF v1.0
Research type
Research Study
Full title
D REACH-HF: Digital Rehabilitation Enablement in Chronic Heart Failure
IRAS ID
291131
Contact name
Pam Baxter
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Exeter
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 5 months, 30 days
Research summary
Heart failure (HF) affects approximately one million UK adults and costs the NHS £2 billion per year. Cardiac rehabilitation (exercise and self-care programmes) improves quality of life and reduces hospital stays. However, less than 20% of HF patients participate, often due to difficulties accessing clinic-based rehabilitation.
New HF guidelines suggest that cardiac rehabilitation should be delivered in a more personalised and accessible setting, such as the patient's home. In a previous clinical trial, we showed that a home-based cardiac rehabilitation programme improves quality of life, is affordable for the NHS and is acceptable to patients, care-givers and health-professionals. This programme includes four elements: a patient HF symptom checker and exercise manual, a patient progress tracker, a family and friends' resource, and support from health-professionals.
This Rehabilitation Enablement in Chronic HF (REACH-HF) programme is now being rolled-out in >10 NHS centres, using the paper manual. Although the programme has been well received by patients, care-givers and health-professionals, we have had many requests for it to be in a digital format, e.g. accessed via a website or app. The aim of this project is to create a digital version of the REACH-HF programme to improve patient choice of, and accessibility to, cardiac rehabilitation.
We will engage in interviews and discussions with patients, caregivers and health-professionals to help us understand and include their perspectives in the development of the digital REACH-HF intervention.
We will continue to work with our patient and public involvement (PPI) group, to engage in the design, delivery and dissemination of this project to ensure that the work undertaken is sensitive to the needs of HF patients. We will provide project updates on our research website and via social media, and will publish in research journals, interact with influential networks and present at BHF events.REC name
North East - Newcastle & North Tyneside 1 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
21/NE/0032
Date of REC Opinion
14 Jan 2021
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion