Award-Winning: How Digital Innovation is Redefining Parkinson's Care

Leeds Teaching Hospitals and Kneu Health win HSJ Partnership Award for Most Effective Contribution to Clinical Redesign

Our partnership with Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust has been recognised as the winner of the HSJ Partnership Award for Most Effective Contribution to Clinical Redesign — one of 31 categories contested by around 200 finalists, judged by more than 100 senior NHS figures. This award matters because it signals more than just a successful project. It shows that the delivery of Parkinson's care is genuinely changing, for the benefit of patients.

Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust partnered with Kneu Health to transform Parkinson's care, moving from a reactive model of six-monthly appointments and limited between-visit insight to a proactive, digitally enabled pathway. The kind of fundamental redesign the HSJ award category was created to recognise.

Using the Kneu Health app, patients' smartphones capture data on walking, balance, dexterity, tremor, and reaction time. Results are analysed by clinically validated AI and shared instantly with the clinical team through a secure dashboard. Over 12 months:

• 207 patients completed 40,000 exercises (equivalent to more than 1000 hours of engagement)
• Patients felt 11% more empowered to manage their condition since using the app
• Patient health knowledge increased by 19%.

Ally Whelan, Highly Specialist Physiotherapist at Leeds Teaching Hospitals, used the app alongside her eight-week high-intensity exercise programme. Whilst traditional outcome measures failed to detect changes in balance and gait in 33% of patients, the Kneu Health app captured 10–25% gains in those same patients. Ally said:

"Our usual outcome measures, although quick to use, lack sensitivity, especially in people in the early stages of the condition. One specific patient didn't recognise the benefit of the exercise we were doing, as their traditional scores didn't change much. But after analysing their app data, we could show them that their Parkinson's symptoms had improved and the areas they needed to focus on in the future.

Kneu Health is a valuable tool in motivating patients to continue with Parkinson's-specific, targeted rehab."

At the HSJ Awards interview, we were joined by one of our patients, whose words made the strongest case of all.

He described the app as something he can "hang onto" between appointments. When told he would not be seen for another six months, the app becomes almost like a companion on that journey. When asked what it would mean if the app were taken away, he was direct: it would frustrate him deeply, because he uses it every day. Perhaps most powerfully, he said he would lose the ability to go into a consultation and say, "This is how I've been since my last set of data", instead having to start from a fresh appraisal every time, with no continuity.

Six months after completing the programme at the Leeds Outpatient Neuro clinic, 67% of patients were still using the app — a testament to how meaningful the ongoing connection had become. The results achieved with our partners in Leeds are not an isolated pilot. Now used across 10 NHS Trusts and two major health systems in the US with over 1,500 people living with Parkinson's, early findings show improved patient engagement, greater clinic efficiency, and fewer hospital admissions. The model is being explored in other conditions.

This is what effective clinical redesign looks like:

• Clinically led, rooted in real-world physiotherapy practice
• Evidence-based, with objective data to support every decision
• Patient-centred, giving people the tools to understand and manage their own condition
• Sustainable, freeing clinical capacity while improving outcomes

As winners of this award, we have been automatically shortlisted for the HSJ Partnership of the Year category at the national HSJ Awards 2026.

Kneu Health is a regulated medical device. For more information about our work with NHS trusts, visit kneu.com/us.