Claire Forbes – KTP Associate

Congratulations to Claire Forbes, our KTP Associate, who has been successful at helping partner company, HRV Fit, secure a COVID-19 grant from Innovate UK.  

HRV Fit was awarded the grant from Innovate UK for ‘Business-led innovation in response to global disruption’ as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The grant aims to support UK businesses to focus on emerging/increasing needs of society and industries during and following the COVID-19 pandemic. The project, titled, ‘Using daily Heart Rate Variability measures to identify the onset and severity of COVID-19’ was one of the selected projects to receive the grant. There were over 8600 applications for the grant, and the project was one of around 800 to be successful.

The project aims to investigate the relationship between symptoms of COVID-19 and Heart Rate Variability (HRV). HRV is a measure of the beat-to-beat alterations in heart rate, and is an index of autonomic nervous system activity. If a relationship is found this will be analysed to see when changes in HRV are evident, compared to when someone first gets symptoms of COVID-19. We will also see if changes in HRV are related to the severity of symptoms that individuals experience.