VIDEO: Precision nutrition app aims to treat ‘whole patient’ with GI disorders
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In a Healio video exclusive, Sam Jactel, CEO and founder of Ayble Health, highlights how the symptom management mobile app could improve quality of life for patients with chronic gastrointestinal conditions.
Jactel, himself an ulcerative colitis patient, said he created the app after he had a “rocky” experience with his own treatment. He had relapsed in disease remission five times in the past 9 years, despite adherence to prescription medications and being seen by multiple GI providers. He wanted to try diet and psychology to supplement his therapy, but he had no resources within his reach.
“We are building an ecosystem of support beyond the clinic for gastroenterology patients including [irritable bowel syndrome] and [inflammatory bowel disease] that provides dietary and psychological support,” Jactel, said.
The Ayble Health app, offers patients information and personalized therapeutic programs to empower patients to eat in a way that manages their GI symptoms.
“[We] use machine learning and [artificial intelligence] to essentially customize a pathway through diet and a pathway through psychology that has the highest likelihood of improving symptoms for IBS patients, IBD patients and those that have chronic GI symptoms but no formal diagnosis yet,” he said. “On the diet side, it is a precision elimination diet. We guide people through the process of eliminating foods and reintroducing those sequentially to identify those triggers for each individual.”
Additionally, the app offers psychology-based therapies such as gut-directed hypnosis and cognitive behavioral therapy, also tailored for the individual patient using the app.
Jactel noted that 13 peer-reviewed publications, including several randomized controlled trials, on the platform demonstrated statistically significant improvement in symptoms for approximately 85% of IBS and IBD patients.
“For almost 70% of patients, by the end of our programs, we see a clinically significant result and for a wide majority of that population, we get them to clinical remission essentially – a symptom-free steady state – which is a huge improvement over standard of care,” Jactel said.
Additionally, these studies have shown that symptomatic improvement persisted for 6 months post-intervention and even continued to 12 months.
“Our vision is that every patient who needs a medical intervention gets a medical intervention, but also has access to on-demand dietetics and GI psychology so that they can fully treat the whole patient and improve those outcomes,” Jactel said.
Jactel noted that providers can fill out a contact form on the Ayble Health’s website to access the Welcome Toolkit to include in their clinics. The kit includes research educational material for the provider and for the patient, and a postcard with a QR code that has a discount for patients when downloading the app.
Reference:
- Ayble Health Launches Best-In-Class Symptom Management Mobile App For
Gastrointestinal (GI) Patients. https://drive.google.com/file/d/10XDLZuWQSGFmTE-7RlqKYjtTMDwq1_Jq/view. Published April 10, 2023. Accessed April 17, 2023.