"A personalised ‘n-of-1’ randomised, double-blinded symptom study of bisoprolol 2.5mg vs. placebo vs. no tablet"

This means that each patient will have an indivdual protocol and be their own control. They will get personalised written and verbal results with counselling.

Many patients with HF miss out on the life prolonging benefits of beta-blockers because of symptoms that they and their clinicians attribute to beta-blocker side effects.

Until now, there is no scientific way to know whether or not a patient’s symptom is truly because of beta-blockers, or the expectation of side-effects when taking medication (nocebo effect).

Each patient will go through a personalised, blinded, randomised period of either bisoprolol, placebo, or no tablet.

• They will tell us how they feel via a smartphone app.

• We will present their personalised results to them after 12 weeks.

We aim to get patients who had previously abandoned it, back onto long term beta-blocker therapy for heart failure.

We aim to develop this design as a way to improve adherence to medical therapy for other long term conditions.