Telemedicine To Provide Inflammatory Bowel Disease Outpatient Care

VA Palo Alto Health Care System

Status and phase: Completed; Phase 2

Conditions: Inflammatory Bowel Disease; Ulcerative Colitis; Crohn's Disease

Treatments: Device: Collaborative Imaging

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other U.S. Federal agency

Identifiers

NCT01296841

TELEMED PA

Details and patient eligibility

About

The investigators hypothesize that outpatient clinical care of Inflammatory Bowel Disease patients may be provided using a new computerized system over standard network - called Collaborative Imaging - with similar patient experience compared to a conventional clinic visit.

Full description

Significant advances in gastroenterology have led the field to grow into a number of advanced subspecialties: inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), motility, therapeutic endoscopy, and transplant hepatology. Telemedicine, the application of information technology in support of health care delivery from a distance, has been employed with good success in various chronic conditions with excellent patient satisfaction.

Primary Aim: Our primary study endpoint was measuring patient clinical experience between two groups: A telemedicine remote clinic visit and a standard "in-house" visit.

Secondary Aim: To compare standard clinic metrics including clinic wait time, patient throughput, and appointment time between the two groups.

Enrollment: 34 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Adult (> 18 years old) outpatient IBD patients in the Veterans Affairs medical system

Exclusion criteria

• VA patients without IBD
• Hospitalized IBD patients

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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34 participants in 2 patient groups

Standard encounter

No Intervention group

Description:

Standard "in-house" clinical visit between patient and physician.

Telemedicine Encounter

Experimental group

Description:

Remote clinical appointment between patient and physician.

Treatment:

Device: Collaborative Imaging