JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Low back pain (LBP) affects many people in the UK, restricting their daily activities and accounting for 5% of GP appointments. Many digital tools exist to support people with low back pain to self-manage their symptoms, however, there is limited evidence on how they work for patients and healthcare professionals, and how consistently they deliver high-quality care. getUBetter is a digital health app that is used by the NHS to support people with low back pain. It helps people to effectively self-manage, use less healthcare resources and return to work. It aims to support them through their recovery journey day-by-day providing them with knowledge, skills, and confidence to self-manage through advice, guidance, exercises, and referral to treatment and local services when needed.

Objective:

To generate real-world evidence on the clinical and cost-effectiveness of implementing getUBetter into LBP clinical pathways, explore current implementation issues, develop training resources and guidance to enable national adoption, and transferable learning to support broader digital adoption across the NHS.

Methods:

The project is made up of 3 parts: 1) Patients with LBP, in various GP practices across one integrated care system (ICS) footprint in southwest England who use the app and those who don’t use it will be recruited into the study. Patients will complete a survey four times over a 12-month period, reporting their use of getUBetter and changes in their symptoms. We will also analyse healthcare data (e.g. number of GP appointments) from the local NHS system to assess the impact of using getUBetter at a system level. 2) Patients who use getUBetter and healthcare professionals who offer it will be interviewed to understand their experiences and the factors that influence their decision to use it or stop using it. 3) Findings will be used to develop guidelines and training resources to support patients, healthcare professionals, local healthcare systems and national services when embedding and using getUBetter, and other digital health tools for the self-management of low back pain and other muscle and joint conditions.

Results:

The study commented in November 2024, and all work packages are in progress.

Conclusions:

getUBetter will use study findings to strengthen their processes to help patients, clinicians, and the health service. This project will create knowledge regarding how technology can support Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) to deliver care across a whole care pathway. Outputs will contribute to NHS understanding of how digital technologies can be used in the real-world and optimally to implement and promote adoption.