Loughborough partnership to revolutionise chronic health condition management with new app

A transformative digital health initiative is set to emerge from Loughborough as researchers from the Centre for Lifestyle Medicine and Behaviour (CLiMB) and the Wolfson School of Engineering team up to create an innovative app designed to significantly enhance self-management for individuals with chronic health conditions.

The development of the app, named the Prevent App, is in collaboration with the healthy habit coaching app, Holly Health, and the award-winning healthcare provider, Modality Partnership. This pioneering project has secured £447,000 in funding from Innovate UK to support the creation of a Just-in-Time Adaptive Intervention (JITAI) machine learning system, poised to effectively manage chronic health conditions.

With approximately 30% of UK adults living with two or more chronic conditions—a scenario known as multimorbidity—the Prevent App could dramatically improve health outcomes for hundreds of thousands. Currently, care for individuals with multimorbidity accounts for 70% of NHS’s total health and social care expenditure. Effective self-management of these conditions can mitigate or even reverse disease progression, thereby reducing the demand on NHS services.

Addressing existing challenges such as financial constraints, inadequate tools, and staff shortages, the Holly Health Prevent app will offer a tailored solution for managing multiple chronic conditions, enhancing the Holly Health Personalised Digital Coaching Service, which has already reduced GP support needs by 33%. The app will utilize machine learning coupled with adaptive behaviour change techniques to provide timely and effective coaching interventions.

Dr. James Sanders, academic lead at Loughborough University, expressed his enthusiasm about the integration of behavioural science with advanced technology: “We’re excited to be pairing the top behavioural science approaches with cutting-edge machine learning technology, recognizing that people with multiple chronic conditions have unique and evolving needs. Accessible digital technologies, like Holly Health Prevent, will provide a great opportunity to drive the day-to-day behaviours that have the potential to revolutionise the management of chronic conditions.”

Dr. James Fleming, Senior Lecturer in intelligent control systems at Loughborough, also noted the data-driven approach of the project: “It’s great to be part of a project like this that takes a data-driven approach to health and wellbeing. Holly Health’s Prevent app is truly innovative and shows great promise to both improve outcomes for individual patients using personalisation and have a significant positive impact on a population scale.”

Grace Gimson, CEO of Holly Health, highlighted the collaborative nature of the project: “We’re very excited to be working with Loughborough University and Modality on this project. This will enable our Prevent app to become the go-to multimorbidity digital self-management tool, which is scalable and will help the NHS meet current societal needs, as well as future proof these for years to come.”

Vincent Sai, CEO of Modality Partnership, added: “This project consortium has huge potential as it will combine Holly Health’s proven track record of successfully supporting people with health conditions with Loughborough University’s behavioural science and machine learning expertise as well as our primary healthcare and community services experience to develop the most efficient app possible in Prevent.”

The app is slated for 18 months of rigorous academic development before its deployment to the public, targeting patients aged 40-65 at risk or currently managing multimorbidity. This groundbreaking process, a first in the UK, sets the stage for a commercial rollout and NHS implementation, aiming to promote a more efficient, robust multimorbidity management system and aid the NHS in reducing associated costs while meeting national health targets.