Firas Sarhan is a trustee at the NR Times award-winning Cauda Equina Champions Charity and senior clinical education lead at the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital.
Here, Firas shares his insight on the charity’s innovative app which is transforming the lives of the cauda equina community across the UK.
“I am responsible for the planning, designing and delivery of education to all healthcare professionals who look after spinal cord injury patients – or who deliver care to those patients anywhere in the UK,” Firas tells NR Times.
It was Firas’ clinical knowledge combined with a deep understanding of how professionals learn that made him such a valuable addition to the Cauda Equina Champions Charity trustee board.
His brief was straightforward: find ways to deepen the charity’s engagement with its community and push its reach further.
Firas had already developed two apps for the National Spinal Injuries Centre, so when he brought the idea of a CaudaEquina app to the table, the concept was grounded in practical experience.
The trustees and the charity’s CEO embraced it immediately. But before a single line of code was written, the community was consulted.
The charity ran focus groups with cauda equina patients, asking them directly what mattered most, what topics they needed and what tools would genuinely help their day-to-day lives.
Firas says: “We invited a group of cauda equina patients and asked: what matters to you? What sort of things would you like to have?
“The app was one of the things they chose. And based on that, we asked what topics they wanted to include.”
Firas Sarhan
The result is a resource that covers everything from understanding what cauda Eeuina syndrome is, from understanding symptoms and managing sexuality to how to join the charity’s workshops across the UK.
Each new article or topic triggers a push notification, keeping users informed and engaged. There are videos, there is a calendar for appointments and there is a patient passport.
Since its launch in July 2025, the app has been downloaded more than 1,270 times, Firas says
Monthly engagement sits at around 11,000 hits. Crucially, the platform is designed for mobile first – a deliberate choice rooted in how people actually live.
Training Hundreds of Clinicians a Year
The app is only one strand of the charity’s work.
“We held our annual conference here at the National Spine Centre at Stoke Mandeville last year,” Firas says.
“We had 70-plus professionals attend. We are aiming to do something similar this year or next.”
The CPD courses are formally accredited, adding to the professional portfolios of all who complete them and ensuring that the knowledge gained carries weight in clinical settings.
Firas is clear about why this education matters.
He says: “Raising awareness, raising knowledge and understanding: that by itself makes it much easier for clinicians.
“And a patient who understands the pathway can ask for it from the clinician once they have been admitted.”
Big Impact, Small Budget
The charity has achieved remarkable success for a turnover of under £200,000.
Firas credits a combination of direct community engagement, smart use of social media and an unshakeable commitment to speaking engaged with the community it represents.
Firas says: “Being active on social media, sharing posts, summarising and analysing surveys and sharing the results with the individuals concerned.
“That really shows we are committed to the client group.”
The charity’s ethos is summed up in a phrase Firas returns to: “We are from them, to them,” with trustees and staff understanding that cauda equina not as an abstract condition but as a lived reality.
That proximity earns trust, drives engagement and, ultimately, enables the charity to act as a credible advocate with decision-makers in health and social care.
Looking to the future, Firas says: “We will continue building it up.
“We will continue to use the app a means to engage, to involve individuals in research, to reach a wider audience across the country.”
