MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit

Personalised exercise rehabilitation for people with multiple long term conditions (PERFORM)

It is increasingly being recognised that exercise based rehabilitation for diseases like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, post-myocardial infarction and heart failure do not meet the needs of the growing number of people presenting with multiple long term conditions. The recent NHS long term plan highlighted the urgent need for innovative approaches to address the needs of people with multimorbidity.

The aim of this study is to co-develop a bespoke programme of personalised exercise based rehabilitation for people with multimorbidity and to evaluate its acceptability, clinical effectiveness and cost effectiveness. The project comprises 5 work packages:

1. Work package 1 will seek to identify clusters of long term conditions with the greatest need and highest healthcare costs, applying data science approaches to routine data; a systematic review and health economics approaches.
2. Work package 2 will work with stakeholders and will integrate, adapt and transform existing cardiac rehabilitation programmes into a novel integrated rehabilitation programme to treat a wide range of people with multiple long term conditions.
3. Work package 3 is a feasibility trial to inform the planning of a full scale trial evaluating PERFORM and further develop the intervention and programme theory
4. Work package 4 is a full randomised control trial to assess the clinical and cost effectiveness of PERFORM compared to routine care and traditional cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation programmes.
5. Work package 5 is a study within a trial and will evaluate the use of social media to support trial processes.

This National Institute of Health research funded project will be conducted over 63 months and work begins January 2022.