The American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) today announced the launch of My IBD Manager, a new digital patient resource developed for the 1.6 million Americans living with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, collectively known as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and the doctors who treat them. This will be followed by the launch of an online clinical platform for health-care professionals, Ask AGA: IBD, powered by the innovative IBM Watson® natural language technology. AGA developed this program in collaboration with @Point of Care and StayWell with exclusive support of Janssen Biotech, Inc. (Janssen).

The My IBD Manager patient app and Ask AGA: IBD clinical platform will work together through information-sharing capabilities to enhance the health-care provider/patient relationship and simplify the complexities of finding IBD-related resources, while providing a one-stop-shop for patients to learn about IBD, monitor their disease, and share information with their health-care provider that result in better health outcomes.

“Understanding and monitoring symptoms is a significant challenge, and people living with IBD are often faced with an over-abundance of resources,” said James Lord, MD, PhD, AGA medical advisor for My IBD Manager and Ask AGA: IBD. “Our goal is to support patients in better understanding their IBD symptoms, and in communicating the full scope of their experiences with their health-care providers. The patient application couples helpful IBD-related information and resources from AGA with tools that guide patients through monitoring the various ways that IBD may impact their lives.”

Tools and features for patients via My IBD Manager include:

• Treatment tracker to help monitor dosing and schedule of treatment and/or supplements.
• Symptom tracker to help stay on top of pain and progress.
• Food log for tracking diet and nutrition.
• Journaling capabilities to monitor daily fatigue, moods, ability to keep social plans, and well-being.
• Expert-reviewed, easy-to-read patient education on IBD-related topics, such as wellness and pregnancy with IBD, including new content developed for the app.
• Gamification that awards points for consistent use.

Bringing together patients and physicians through the two digital offerings, participating doctors can access automatically generated charts from patient-entered data, enhancing their sense of a patient’s experience to inform treatment decisions and disease management. A forthcoming care team feature will further extend the patient-physician engagement, allowing patients to link the entire application up with their physicians, granting full access to all information.

“Through our decades-long commitment to people living with IBD, we understand the unpredictability and challenges they face on a daily basis, both physically and emotionally,” said Tara Muzsi, director of gastroenterology marketing, Janssen Immunology. “Partnering with the AGA to support the My IBD Manager patient app and Ask AGA: IBD clinician platform, which leverages the latest artificial intelligence technology coupled with the expertise of the AGA, supports our goal of fostering better patient-physician partnerships and is a natural complement to the therapies we offer to manage IBD.”