Rheumatoid Arthritis

Capturing Patient Reported Outcomes in RA to Improve Quality of Care & Outcomes in Real‐World Settings

We will develop a national, highly‐generalizable software platform to electronically capture patient reported outcome (PRO) data for RA patients. This tool will be used by clinicians to improve process of care and outcomes in the management of RA. Our proposed work builds on past and ongoing research and electronic clinical tool development at the University of Alabama (UAB) in rheumatoid arthritis (RA), provider‐patient activation in the context of evidence implementation trials, health information technology (HIT), and our current relationship with CreakyJoints, the largest arthritis patient community in the world. Seeking to effect tangible improvement in RA patients’ outcomes and better quality of care consistent with national guidelines, many of which we have developed in partnership with the American College of Rheumatology (ACR), we will build on existing relationships collaborations to bring together researchers with expertise in rheumatology, epidemiology, bioinformatics, statistics, risk communication and medical decision‐making. We will leverage our past work at UAB building electronic PRO data capture tools. This system is complementary to but not redundant with an electronic health record (EHR) and can be used with paper‐based medical records systems. The main objectives of this project are to implement and rigorously test the deployment of practical, real‐world tools in routine clinical practice to measure Patient Reported Outcomes (PROs) and RA disease activity.