We are thrilled to share that our clinical academic partners at East Lancashire NHS Trust and Lancaster University have won a national award at the Advancing Healthcare Awards (AHA) 2026 for the best collaboration across clinical, academia and industry for the development of the NeuroRehabilitation OnLine (NROL) programme.  

NROL delivers multidisciplinary rehabilitation remotely, enabling patients to access specialist therapy from home. By overcoming barriers such as geography, mobility limitations and fatigue, the programme increases both access to and intensity of rehabilitation.

The award highlights the long-standing collaboration between Professor Louise Connell and colleagues at Lancaster University’s Health Innovation Campus and clinical teams at ELHT.

ELAROS has been working in strategic partnership with Lancaster University & East Lancashire NHS Trust since 2024 to develop NROL further into a digitally scalable pathway, deployed through our autonom-e platform, receiving support from Health Innovation North West Coast through an SBRI Healthcare grant which concluded in 2026. 

Professor Connell said: “This award recognises the strength of our clinical–academic partnership with the trust.

“By integrating research, digital innovation and clinical expertise, we’ve been able to move beyond pilot work to deliver meaningful impact at scale.

“Crucially, NROL is helping us address inequities in access to neurorehabilitation which have persisted for too long.”

NROL delivers multidisciplinary rehabilitation remotely, enabling patients to access structured, specialist therapy from home.

Since its launch, it has supported more than 1,000 patients across Lancashire & South Cumbria and Cheshire & Merseyside. Patients typically receive an additional 360 to 480 minutes of targeted therapy, with evidence showing improvements in activity levels and quality of life.

Adam Partington, NROL Operational Lead at ELHT, added: “Winning this award is a proud moment for NROL and everyone involved. This recognition reflects five years of dedication, innovation and true collaboration – for partners, therapists, and most importantly, with our patients.

“Together, we’ve worked to knock down traditional boundaries in rehabilitation, improving outcomes and expanding access to care. This award recognises the hard work, commitment and shared vision of a remarkable team. It’s a collective achievement and we’re incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished together.”

A defining feature of the programme is the way the ELHT/Lancaster University partnership embeds evaluation and implementation research directly into clinical delivery. This has ensured continuous learning, robust outcome measurement and rapid refinement of the model as it expanded from Lancashire and South Cumbria into Cheshire and Merseyside.

Stephen Sandford, Strategic Lead for Neighbourhood Health & Chief Allied Health Professions Officer at Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board, said: “Now an ICB-commissioned service, NROL widens choice and improves access to rehabilitation across our geography, delivering both efficiencies and better outcomes for patients.

“We are excited by the opportunity to build on this learning to further digitally enable and expand rehabilitation pathways.”

Amy Bastow, Cheshire & Merseyside NROL Project Lead, added: “The Cheshire and Mersey NROL team have really valued the opportunity to work so closely with partners, patients and clinicians to introduce NROL to stroke patients in our region.

“This collaborative approach has been key to NROL’s growth and success, enabling ongoing innovation and development driven by clinical outcomes and patient feedback.

“Seeing NROL’s collaborative approach to service delivery recognised at the Advancing Healthcare Awards 2026 is fantastic recognition of the hard work involved and the impact of true partnership working.”

The programme was co-developed with a wider cross-sector partnership including ELAROS 24/7 Ltd, SameYou and Health Innovation North West Coast, combining digital infrastructure, lived-experience input and implementation expertise and access to funding to support scale-up.

Steve Adams, Commercial Programme Manager of Innovation and Industry Partnerships at Health Innovation North West Coast, said: “Winning this award reflects our approach in helping others to improve care and services in the NHS.

“We help clinicians improve clinical practice, pathways and processes. And we help businesses do business with the NHS.

“This is an excellent example of clinicians, academia and industry collaborating to get the investment to develop and deliver the improvements and, in getting the business case approved, NROL is now an established and commissioned service in Lancashire and South Cumbria.”

Professor Paul O’Brien, Chief Executive Officer at ELAROS, added: “ELAROS is most comfortable when it is working in partnership with fantastic, clinicians, academics and NHS connectors.

“The NROL partnership has been a real joy for ELAROS colleagues to be involved in developing alongside the other fantastic NROL family.

“Winning this significant award we hope will enable NROL to be rolled out to other regional stroke services and, beyond that, into other long-term conditions where group therapy is a central facet of delivery.”

NROL was initially developed by brain injury charity SameYou and the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology in 2020, at the height of the COVID pandemic, as a new approach for patient rehabilitation in lockdown.

Patients and communities have been central to NROL’s development, shaping its design through ongoing co-production and feedback. This has helped ensure accessibility, reduce digital exclusion and improve acceptability across diverse populations.

Alongside improvements in patient outcomes, NROL delivers wider system benefits including enhanced multidisciplinary working, increased digital capability among staff and reduced travel-related costs and environmental impact.

With successful implementation across multiple regions, the model is now positioned for wider national adoption and long-term NHS commissioning, aligning with priorities for digital transformation and equitable rehabilitation services.

Jenny Clarke MBE, Co-Founder and CEO SameYou, said: “We are proud to have co-created and supported NROL from the start and look forward to continuing to innovate with our aftercare services. NROL has the potential to dramatically change the game for digital rehabilitation services throughout the NHS.”

We are extremely excited and proud to announce ELAROS has been successfully commissioned by Lancashire & South Cumbria ICB to deliver the NeuroRehabilitation OnLine service through our autonom-e platform.

Thanks to our successful SBRI Healthcare project which closes in July 2026, led by East Lancashire NHS Foundation, which enabled ELAROS to co-design and develop our NROL service, implement and validate in a real-world setting, Lancashire & South Cumbria ICB has commissioned a) NHS service with recurrent funding, and b) ELAROS to digitally scale and streamline the service with our autonom-e platform.

Our pilot study which was supported through the SBRI grant supported the following activities:

• The launch of our autonom-e platform and service, pivoted from ELAROS’ NHS-recommended “C19-YRS” platform for Long Covid 
• The co-design and development of the NROL pathway within autonom-e for stroke and acquired brain injury:
  • The development of our intelligent group scheduling module to co-ordinate therapy across multiple groups of staff and patients
  • A single shared specialist platform for regional delivery teams and the NROL co-ordinating teams 
  • A single ICB-wide PROM dataset, reporting dashboard, and centralised referral, discharge, and PIFU pathway

Our early pilot across Lancashire & South Cumbria has generated the following outcomes so far:

• 85 hours admin time saved per therapy block – estimated 510 hours savings per annum on scheduling alone
• Estimated 1,000 administrative hours saved per annum when compared to commissioning therapy services locally
• Enhanced workforce utilisation, pooling specialist skills to support patients across a region
• 3.7X ROI when comparing ELAROS’ regional licence to separately commissioned services
• 35% more referrals expected to be supported over the next 12 months as a result of commissioning autonom-e
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Additionally, the East Lancashire NROL team has been nominated for two awards:

• NHS Excellence Awards’ Regional Champion for Patient Involvement & Choice, whilst awaiting news on the national award ceremony on 10th June
• Advancing Healthcare Awards UK 2026′ Award for the best collaboration across clinical, academia and industry

On behalf of ELAROS, we give thanks to all our partners involved in our SBRI project, led by East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust in collaboration with Lancaster University, Health Innovation North West Coast, SameYou, Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB), and NHS Cheshire and Merseyside.

A huge congratulations to our superstar NeuroRehabilitation OnLine team at East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust and the wider Lancashire & South Cumbria region for being named Regional Champion for Patient Involvement & Choice at the NHS Excellence Awards.

We’ve had the pleasure of working with East Lancs and a wide range of partners on the digitisation of their NROL service through an SBRI Healthcare grant, building on the foundations of their fantastic service that has involved patients at the heart of everything they do.

Lots more to share on this front soon!

We’re incredibly proud to be the technology partner driving the digital NROL service at East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust through our autonom-e platform.

It’s great to see the continued momentum behind NROL, strengthened by the recent BMJ Open publication from colleagues at ELHT and Lancaster University evaluating its large-scale implementation across NHS services: https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/16/2/e101820.

The paper highlights what many involved have already seen in their practice:

• Increased access to group-based neurorehabilitation.
• Regional efficiencies through collaborative system working.
• A clear pathway toward sustainable, digitally enabled rehabilitation delivery.
• Strong engagement from both patients and therapy teams.

Evidence, implementation, and technology coming together – this is what real healthcare transformation looks like, and we’re proud to be part of it!

Aimed at a clinicians, academics, and service providers: attend to learn more about the development and launch of the ME Association Clinical Assessment Toolkit available to clinical services