The PROMise of remote monitoring to improve quality of care for inflammatory bowel disease

Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis are chronic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), characterized by periods of unpredictable flare-up with potentially irreversible bowel damage. Current routinely planned outpatient visits often do not coincide with disease flare-ups and many relevant disease aspects, such as compliance, nutritional status and psychological complaints are often underexposed.

This dissertation describes the development of the myIBDcoach telemedicine tool with the aim of making IBD care of higher quality.
In addition to disease activity, MijnIBDcoach also monitors aspects such as compliance, diet and psychological factors and offers the patient a personal care plan and accessible contact with IBD nurses. Patients and care providers were very satisfied and it appears that myIBDcoach reduces the number of outpatient visits by 36% and halves the number of hospital admissions, resulting in a cost saving of € 547 per patient per year. Telemedicine also provides insight to improve long-term outcomes, such as the finding that stress and malnutrition contribute to flare-ups. Targeted interventions were offered via myIBD coach.