University of Leeds awarded £3.4 million NIHR-funded long Covid research project with support from ELAROS

An extensive range of 15 projects from across the UK have been awarded a total of £19.6 million to examine causes of long COVID, trial drugs to tackle it, and investigate symptoms such as breathlessness and ‘brain fog’ that have become synonymous with the condition. Studies will also evaluate health services and explore ways patients can monitor the condition to optimise their recovery and return to work.

A major £3.4 million research project has been awarded to a research consortium led by The University of Leeds which includes Imperial College London, King’s College London and The University of Oxford, with ELAROS named as a commercial partner.

The LOCOMOTION (LOng COVID Multidisciplinary consortium: Optimising Treatments and servIces acrOss the NHS) study aims to create a “gold standard” approach for the treatment of long Covid and will identify best practice in providing services, ensuring people are supported quickly and receive the right treatments from the right healthcare professionals – in their own home, through their GP or at specialist long COVID clinics.

A major focus of the project is centred on the development and optimisation of ELAROS’ C19-YRS platform which will launch at 10x clinical sites across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales almost overnight. The incentive is to gather large amounts of patient data quickly to help the consortium devise ways of supporting the nearly 2 million long Covid patients in the UK, and to further validate the C19-YRS scale to develop a standardised approach.

The official press release from The University of Leeds can be found here: https://www.leeds.ac.uk/news-health/news/article/4871/creating-a-gold-standard-of-care-for-long-covid

Further details on the other round winners can be found in the following article: https://www.nihr.ac.uk/news/196-million-awarded-to-new-research-studies-to-help-diagnose-and-treat-long-covid/28205