A scheme to help brain injury and stroke survivors is being rolled out through South Cumbria and Lancashire, thanks to £180,000 from a charity.
The Neuro Rehabilitation OnLine (NROL) programme, is jointly run by East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust and the University of Central Lancashire, has received the cash from brain injury recovery charity SameYou to expand the pilot project.
SameYou has been awarded funding from The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest funder of community activity in the UK, and will enable the scheme to be rolled out through Lancashire and South Cumbria.
The scheme uses online video sessions to provide one-to-one and group specialist neurorehabilitation, was created because the COVID-19 pandemic affected the number of patients who could access face-to-face NHS treatment.
Due to the pilot scheme’s success earlier this year, which involved 90 patients, the programme will now be rolled out to patients within the two counties.
Project lead Louise Connell is a UCLan professor of allied health neurorehabilitation and stroke and she also works for the health trust.
She said: “I’m absolutely delighted our scheme is being rolled out to help more people who’ve had a stroke or have other neurological conditions throughout the region.
“We know that, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, people with stroke and other brain injuries are spending less time in hospital and receiving less neurorehabilitation.
“This is all about using video technology to support patients, via a range of different groups covering cognitive and physical recovery, in their homes to ensure they can continue their recovery.”
The county wide scheme will involve physiotherapists, occupational therapists, psychologists, speech and language therapists and medical and assistant practitioners from the trust, Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust, University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust and Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
If the regional rollout is deemed a success, a national NROL programme could soon follow.
Prof Connell added: “Therapy services are continuing the process of restoration post-COVID and there is a need to understand the learning from online rehabilitation to determine its place in the future. It’s anticipated this will be a hybrid model of face-to-face and virtual input which will allow a greater intensity of therapy to be delivered to more people and in a more convenient way.”
The expansion of the scheme would not have been possible without funding from the SameYou charity, which was set up by actress Emilia Clarke after she suffered two life threatening brain haemorrhages whilst working on set for Game of Thrones.
