A non-inferiority randomised clinical trial of the use of the smartphone-based health applications IBDsmart and IBDoc®in the care of inflammatory bowel disease patients

In this poster from ECCO 2019 Dr. Russell Walmsley describes his team’s study, that showed that the care for patient in a remote setting was not inferior to conventional care. They randomly assigned 50 IBD (UC and CD) patients to be followed for 52 weeks either via standard clinic care with face to face meetings between patients and their physicians or to be remotely monitored by a combination of two apps. The first app, IBDSmart allowed the patients to fill in Quality of Life (IBDQ) and clinical symptom assessments questionnaires (SCCAI for Ulcerative Colitis patients and HBI for Crohns patients). The second app was IBDoc® that allowed the patients to perform faecal calprotectin measurements at home.

Overall the authors conclude that the use of IBDSmart and IBDoc® in routine clinical care of IBD patients over 12 months is demonstrated to be acceptable, usable and non-inferior to standard clinic-based care.

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