STIMULATE-ICP (Symptoms, Trajectory, Inequalities and Management: Understanding Long-COVID to Address and Transform Existing Integrated Care Pathways)

Long Covid is affecting over a million people in the UK. The wide-ranging symptoms are disabling, and need joined-up care from specialists, hospitals and community services. Over 80 long COVID clinics have been established but we need to better understand, diagnose and treat the disease. We will design and test the best ways to care for people with long COVID. We will bring together six regions: Derby, Exeter, Hull, Leicester, Liverpool, and London, and include the Royal College of General Practitioners policy team, health professionals and academics. Four patient organisations have helped to develop this proposal. They will be involved across the project from design to dissemination. To improve recovery, we will work out what long COVID is, how to diagnose it and how to manage it. The data and findings will be easily accessible to aid further research and service improvement. We will interview patients and health professionals and analyse data from NHS records. This will inform our understanding of patterns of long COVID and the outcomes of current clinical practice. Usual care involves basic investigations such as blood tests and self-management of rehabilitation using a website https://www.yourcovidrecovery.nhs.uk/ . We will recruit over 4,500 patients in the largest long-COVID trial to-date. We will compare a new pathway including community-based, comprehensive MRI scan (CoverscanTM) and enhanced rehabilitation (Living with COVID RecoveryTM) with usual care. We will also test different drugs, including aspirin, colchicine and loratadine/famotidine. We will measure effects of three months treatment by symptoms, mental health, return to work and other important outcomes. With patients, we will co-develop means to improve patient access to the right care at the right time in the right place, including health professional training. We will consider the aspects of long COVID care which might improve care for patients with multimorbidity and long-term conditions.