Research at the Practice

OpenPROMPT Study

About the Study

Long COVID is estimated to affect 2.7 million people in the UK. One way of assessing the impact of long COVID is to measure quality-of-life through a standard questionnaire, which can then be used to understand the costs of long COVID to the NHS and wider economy. The impact of long COVID on these measures is not currently known. It is important to understand who is worst affected by long COVID and the cost to the NHS, so that strategies like booster vaccines can be prioritised to the right people.

OpenPROMPT aims to understand the impact of long COVID on quality-of-life in adults in English primary care.

We will ask people to participate in the study by downloading a smartphone app, and completing a series of questionnaires held within the app. Questionnaires will ask about quality of life, productivity and symptoms of long COVID. Participants will be asked to fill in the questionnaires once a month, for four months which will take roughly 15 minutes to complete each month.

The results will tell us if long COVID has different quality-of-life and economic impacts among people of different ages, ethnicities, geographic regions, or because of any underlying health conditions. These results can be converted into standardised measurements used by the NHS to measure the impact of illnesses and the cost of long COVID to health services.

For more information click on the following link OpenPROMPT | LSHTM

Who will be able to take part?

Eligible persons must:

Have a smartphone
Have downloaded and logged in to the Airmid app
Be 18years or older

Active Brain Study

The study team have made a new website called ‘Active Brains’ which aims to help older adults to look after their brain and body health. The aim is to help prevent problems with things like remembering, concentrating or reasoning (known as cognitive decline). The website will help older adults to make simple changes such as getting more active, playing brain training games and finding ways to eat more healthily. This research will test how well the website works. We will be testing the website in two groups of people: 1) older adults with signs of cognitive decline, 2) older adults without any cognitive decline. Members of both these groups of people will be randomly put into one of three study groups: 1) care as they usually receive it from their GP practice, or 2) the Active Brains website, or 3) the Active Brains website plus a bit of support from a trained person (over the phone or by email). The study will last for five years. At the end of the first year we will compare people’s thinking (cognitive) skills in each of the three study groups. After five years we will compare the three study groups again and also check how many of the people in each study group went on to be diagnosed with dementia.

Who will be able to take part?

A large number of eligible patients have been identified and will receive details of how to register for this study