VIENNA — People with spondyloarthritis (SpA) who have low or stable disease activity can effectively and safely be managed using a model of patient-initiated care with or without remote monitoring, suggested the results of two separate trials presented at the European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology (EULAR) 2024 Annual Meeting.
In the 18-month, single-center ReMonit study that included 243 people with axial SpA (axSpA), patient-initiated care was found to be noninferior for keeping them in a low-disease activity state, compared with both usual hospital follow-up and remote digital monitoring.
Meanwhile, in the 12-month, multicenter TeleSpA study, which included 200 patients with any type of SpA, the number of hospital visits needed by people who were randomly assigned to receive patient-initiated care together with asynchronous telemonitoring was significantly lower than for the usual-care group, with no detriment to the participants’ overall health outcomes or safety. Moreover, the strategy was deemed cost-effective from a healthcare provision perspective.
Time to Rationalize Healthcare Resources?
People with chronic rheumatic diseases such as axSpA require long-term follow-up in specialist healthcare centers, Inger Jorid Berg, MD, PhD, of Diakonhjemmet Hospital in Oslo, Norway, said when she presented the findings of the ReMonit study as a late-breaking abstract.
Sara Freeman/Medscape Medical News
Dr. Inger Jorid Berg
“Traditionally, this has been offered as prescheduled face-to-face consultations at an outpatient clinic, but remote monitoring and patient-initiated care may allow for more targeted and efficient uses of healthcare resources,” Dr. Berg said.
“The end goal of what you’re trying to do is increase the efficiency of outpatient care and provide more patient-tailored care,” Kasper Hermans, MD, said in an interview. He presented the results of the TeleSpA study.
Dr. Hermans, who is a rheumatology fellow and PhD candidate at Maastricht University, Maastricht, the Netherlands, observed during his presentation at EULAR 2024 that there is an increasing demand for rheumatology services but an expected shortfall in the future workforce. Thus, “sustainable alternative strategies are needed for optimizing the efficiency of care,” he said.
People need to have timely access to care, Dr. Hermans stressed, but perhaps alternatives to the traditional models of care where patients are seen routinely every 6 or 12 months are needed, particularly as prior work had suggested that around one-third of people who were seen by a rheumatologist perhaps did not need to be.
A strategy of patient-initiated care — which is where people are seen by a healthcare provider only if they feel that they need to and request a consultation — is therefore an attractive proposition, particularly if it is backed up with remote monitoring, which is what the TeleSpA study was testing.
Two Distinct Studies
ReMonit and TeleSpA were two distinct studies. While both were noninferiority trials and involved patient-initiated care and telemonitoring of outpatients with SpA, that is where the similarities generally end.
Notably, ReMonit included a very specific population of patients — all had a diagnosis of axSpA and were being treated with a tumor necrosis factor (TNF) inhibitor and had been on a stable dose for the last 6 months. For inclusion, they also had to have inactive disease or low disease activity, as indicated by an Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Score (ASDAS) < 2.1.
ReMonit’s telemonitoring strategy involved participants completing monthly questionnaires using the Dignio smartphone app. Patients first completed the Patient Global Assessment (PGA) and noted whether they had experienced a flare in their disease. If they had a flare or their PGA score was 3 or higher, then they were asked to also complete the Bath Ankylosing Spondyloarthritis Disease Activity Index (BASDAI). If the BASDAI score was 4 or more, then the patient was called by a study nurse and offered a consultation.
“Patients in all three groups were recommended to take blood samples at the general practitioner’s or at the hospital every third month as a safety procedure when using TNF inhibitors,” Dr. Berg said.
The primary outcome was the proportion of people who remained with low disease activity (ASDAS < 2.1) at 6, 12, and 18 months in each of the three arms of the trial, which were patient-initiated care (n = 81), monthly remote monitoring (n = 80), or usual follow-up in the hospital every 6 months (n = 82).
TeleSpA on the other hand was a “much more pragmatic trial, much closer to actual care,” Dr. Hermans said. “We included axial spondyloarthritis, peripheral spondyloarthritis, or patients who had both axial and peripheral disease, including patients with psoriatic arthritis,” he said, adding that their inclusion was regardless of their baseline ASDAS based on C-reactive protein (ASDAS-CRP).
This means that patients who would otherwise have been classified at baseline as having high disease activity (by ASDAS-CRP or similar disease activity measures) could be included. The main proviso was that both the patient and their rheumatologist had to define the condition as being stable with an acceptable level of symptom control and no immediate plans to change treatment within the next 3 months.
Dr. Kasper Hermans
TeleSpA’s remote monitoring strategy involved the use of SpA-Net, which Dr. Hermans and coinvestigators have described previously as “an ongoing, disease-specific, prospective, web-based registry for monitoring SpA in daily practice.” This captures a host of clinical and laboratory test information.
SpA-Net was used in both arms of the study. However, while the 100 participants in the standard-care arm completed questionnaires and had tests before every in-person visit that had been prescheduled with their rheumatologist, the 100 individuals in the patient-initiated care arm had no prescheduled in-person visits except for being seen at the start and end of the study. These patients were reminded via email to complete the necessary SpA-Net registry questionnaires at 6 months.
The primary outcome for TeleSpA was the total number of rheumatology visits, including both physical and telephone or video consultations, within a 1-year period.