Health sensing technologies in people with inflammatory bowel disease.
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Health Sensing Technologies in People With Inflammatory Bowel Disease.
IRAS ID
202923
Contact name
Alexander von Roon
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Imperial College London
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Traditional disease indices for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are questionnaire-based, only collect data on symptoms and are generally cumbersome to use. Biological measures of disease activity require blood, urine, and/or stool samples which are inconvenient and unpleasant for participants.
The majority of patients with IBD are young and own a smartphone. The health sensing technology built in to every smartphone (currently based on the phone’s movement sensor) can be harnessed to gather data on disease activity in a contemporaneous way that does not inconvenience the patient. The smartphone can also be used as a platform to gather traditional questionnaire-based information such as disease activity and health-related quality of life from patients alongside the automatic health sensing technology. A smartphone may also be used to explore patients’ views on what functions they would ideally like to see in an IBD app.
This pilot study will explore whether smartphone health sensing technology is superior to traditional questionnaire-based and biological disease activity indices in detecting changes in disease activity in patients with IBD.
We would also seek consent from participants to collect a blood, urine and stool sample, once before commencing medical or surgical treamtent and once afterwards. Where the participant is undergoing a colonoscopy as part of routine clinical care, we would also seek consent to collect an additional biopsy sample of the colonic lining (mucosa) for the study. These samples would be used for metabolic phenotyping in order to allow correlation of biological data with the smartphone data and traditional disease activities. This part of the study would be optional for participants.
REC name
West Midlands - South Birmingham Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/WM/0338
Date of REC Opinion
21 Jul 2016
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion