Patient Engagement With Digital Health Tools in Rheumatology

Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust

Status: Not yet enrolling

Conditions: Rheumatic Disease; PROM

Treatments: Other: Semi-structured interview; Other: Questionnaire

Study type: Observational

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05465356

EDGE 147423

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the patient engagement with digital tools for diagnosis and monitoring of disease in rheumatology services

Full description

The investigators plan to undertake a mixed methods study to investigate a digital algorithm to potentially inform triage of new patient referral to rheumatology services, as well as to inform follow up review schedules. Current practice at out hospital is to ask all newly referred patients to complete a pre-appointment digital questionnaire prior to their clinic visit. Patients who need follow up are then routinely invited to continue to return interval questionnaires related to their symptoms between clinic visits.

The investigators believe that the questionnaire responses could enable appropriate (and safe) allocation to a particular clinic (e.g. urgent early arthritis clinic or general rheumatology clinic for a new referral), or define an appropriate clinic follow up interval for a repeat visit for patients with a rheumatic disease.

Our study aims to evaluate these questionnaires using data collected from routine clinical practice, as well a series of semi-structured interviews with service users.

Enrollment: 3,000 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Inclusion Criteria: quantitative phase:

• Aged 18 years and above

• Able to complete the questionnaire in English

  1. New patient pre-appointment questionnaires

• Referred as a new patient to the rheumatology outpatient department at Guys and St Thomas' Trust between 01/01/2019 to 01/10/2023 and sent a digital pre-appointment questionnaire

• Electronic patient notes recorded between 01/01/2019 to 01/10/2024

  2. Follow up patients PROM questionnaires

• Patients under followup of the rheumatology department at Guys and St Thomas' Trust with a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis or axial spondyloarthropathy who have been added to the remote monitoring program between 01/01/2019 to 01/10/2023

• Electronic patient notes recorded between 01/01/2019 to 01/10/2024

Inclusion criteria: qualitative phase:

• Aged 18 years and above

  1. New patient pre-appointment questionnaires

• Referred as a new patient to the rheumatology outpatient department at Guys and St Thomas' Trust between 01/01/2019 to 01/10/2023 and sent a digital pre-appointment questionnaire

• Able to communicate in English or any language offered for audio interpreting by the LanguageLine service

  2. Follow up patients PROM questionnaires

• Patients under followup of the rheumatology department at Guys and St Thomas' Trust with a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis or axial spondyloarthropathy who have been added to the remote monitoring program between 01/01/2019 to 01/10/2023

• Able to communicate in English or any language offered for audio interpreting by the LanguageLine service

Exclusion Criteria: quantitative phase:

• Under 18 years of age
• Unable to complete study questionnaires

Exclusion criteria: qualitative phase:

• Under 18 years of age
• Patients lacking the capacity to consent for themselves for the semi-structured interview

Trial design

3,000 participants in 2 patient groups

New patients

Description:

All new referrals seen in the rheumatology outpatients department, completing pre-appointment digital questionnaires

Treatment:

Other: Semi-structured interview

Other: Questionnaire

Follow-up patients

Description:

Patient with inflammatory arthritis completing ePROMs \[electronic Patient Reported Outcome Measures\] through the remote monitoring platform

Treatment:

Other: Semi-structured interview

Other: Questionnaire