VIDEO: Addressing unmet needs in patients with rheumatoid arthritis

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The treatment of rheumatoid arthritis has really improved a lot over the last couple decades, and people do very, very well on treatment now. I think one of the major unmet needs is just the precise use of the therapies that exist. So, figuring out who should take what therapy and finding that out a little sooner than we do now would be a value to a lot of patients. We also don't really know how to prevent some of the long-term outcomes that we know are more common in patients with rheumatoid arthritis like cardiovascular disease and interstitial lung disease. So, trying to identify who really needs treatment for those things with more precision so that we can prevent those outcomes as well, I think would be of value.

I think we also don't know who can safely reduce therapies. I think that's been something over the last decade or so that we're really interested in. Who can come off the, or at least reduce their therapy? And right now, we don't have a lot of evidence about that. And, generally, patients stay on therapy for a very long time. And then I think finally, there are a lot of patients with low healthcare access, which is really caring for patients effectively difficult due to some of the problems in our healthcare system that limit our ability to get the right drugs to the right people.