VIDEO: Simplified text message-based telemedicine system improves adherence in IBD patients

CHICAGO — In this exclusive video, Raymond Cross, MD, associate professor of medicine in the department of gastroenterology and hepatology, and director of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Program at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, discusses his research on the efficacy of a text message-based telemedicine system for IBD patients, which he presented at Digestive Disease Week.

This was a multicenter study in which researchers randomly assigned 348 patients to receive standard of care or the telemedicine intervention plus standard of care every other week or weekly.

“What we found unfortunately is that patients’ disease activity and disease-specific quality of life did not differ based on group. We did find however that all three groups over the course of the year improved significantly from baseline,” Cross said. “Despite the overall negative result to the study, there’s a couple of key points here. One, we’ve been able to show that by simplifying a telemedicine system we can decrease attrition over the course of 1 year [and] that’s a very important finding moving forward. Secondly, we still haven’t evaluated our health care utilization over the course of the study yet. We may find that patients who receive telemedicine in fact used less health care resources, and if we are able to demonstrate this despite the lack of impact on disease activity and quality of life, that’ll still be a very important finding.”

Reference:

Cross R, et al. Su1919. Presented at: Digestive Disease Week; May 6-9, 2017; Chicago.

Disclosures: This study was funded by the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality. Cross reports financial relationships with AbbVie, Janssen and Takeda.