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Digital Rheumatology

Edited by: Professor Thomas Hugle, Dr Johannes Knitza and Dr Martin Krusche

Digitalisation is transforming medicine, both for patients and physicians. Mobile health including apps, telemedicine and artificial intelligence are entering the field rapidly. This process is fostered by the current pandemic, obviously requiring more autonomy and flexibility of patients and doctors.

Digital transformation in health care notably affects patients with chronic disorders and long, interdisciplinary patient journeys. In rheumatology, most immune-mediated, degenerative or chronic pain disorders are chronic. Thus our patients likely will get in contact with digital solutions and hopefully there will be improved patient care.

This collection is dedicated to the topic Digital Rheumatology. The aim of this series is to collect articles on new digital tools and solutions and to describe their practical use and implementation in rheumatic patient care. 

  1. The identification of patients with knee osteoarthritis (OA) likely to progress rapidly in terms of structure is critical to facilitate the development of disease-modifying drugs.

    Authors: Jean-Baptiste Schiratti, Rémy Dubois, Paul Herent, David Cahané, Jocelyn Dachary, Thomas Clozel, Gilles Wainrib, Florence Keime-Guibert, Agnes Lalande, Maria Pueyo, Romain Guillier, Christine Gabarroca and Philippe Moingeon
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2021 23:262
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  2. Clinical research projects often use traditional methods in which data collection and signing informed consent forms rely on patients’ visits to the research institutes. However, during challenging times when ...

    Authors: L. Boekel, F. Hooijberg, E. H. Vogelzang, P. L. Klarenbeek, W. H. Bos, S. W. Tas and G. J. Wolbink
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2021 23:207
    Content type: Review Published on:

  3. The new concept of difficult-to-treat rheumatoid arthritis (D2T RA) refers to RA patients who remain symptomatic after several lines of treatment, resulting in a high patient and economic burden. During a hack...

    Authors: Marianne A. Messelink, Nadia M. T. Roodenrijs, Bram van Es, Cornelia A. R. Hulsbergen-Veelken, Sebastiaan Jong, L. Malin Overmars, Leon C. Reteig, Sander C. Tan, Tjebbe Tauber, Jacob M. van Laar, Paco M. J. Welsing and Saskia Haitjema
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2021 23:184
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  4. Clinical data collection requires correct and complete data sets in order to perform correct statistical analysis and draw valid conclusions. While in randomized clinical trials much effort concentrates on dat...

    Authors: Lisa Lindner, Anja Weiß, Andreas Reich, Siegfried Kindler, Frank Behrens, Jürgen Braun, Joachim Listing, Georg Schett, Joachim Sieper, Anja Strangfeld and Anne C. Regierer
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2021 23:181
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  5. We developed a model to predict remissions in patients treated with biologic disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (bDMARDs) and to identify important clinical features associated with remission using explain...

    Authors: Bon San Koo, Seongho Eun, Kichul Shin, Hyemin Yoon, Chaelin Hong, Do-Hoon Kim, Seokchan Hong, Yong-Gil Kim, Chang-Keun Lee, Bin Yoo and Ji Seon Oh
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2021 23:178
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  6. Electronic health records (EHRs) offer a wealth of observational data. Machine-learning (ML) methods are efficient at data extraction, capable of processing the information-rich free-text physician notes in EH...

    Authors: T. D. Maarseveen, M. P. Maurits, E. Niemantsverdriet, A. H. M. van der Helm-van Mil, T. W. J. Huizinga and R. Knevel
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2021 23:174
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  7. Multimorbidity raises the number of essential information needed for delivery of high-quality care in patients with chronic diseases like rheumatoid arthritis (RA). We evaluated an innovative ICT platform for ...

    Authors: Jutta G. Richter, Gamal Chehab, Catarina Schwartz, Elisabeth Ricken, Monika Tomczak, Hasan Acar, Henrike Gappa, Carlos A. Velasco, Peter Rosengren, Armanas Povilionis, Matthias Schneider and Jesper Thestrup
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2021 23:151
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  8. Mobile medical applications (Apps) offer innovative solutions for patients’ self-monitoring and new patient management opportunities. Prior to routine clinical application feasibility and acceptance of disease...

    Authors: Jutta G. Richter, Christina Nannen, Gamal Chehab, Hasan Acar, Arnd Becker, Reinhart Willers, Dörte Huscher and Matthias Schneider
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2021 23:121
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  9. Timely diagnosis and treatment are essential in the effective management of inflammatory rheumatic diseases (IRDs). Symptom checkers (SCs) promise to accelerate diagnosis, reduce misdiagnoses, and guide patien...

    Authors: Johannes Knitza, Jacob Mohn, Christina Bergmann, Eleni Kampylafka, Melanie Hagen, Daniela Bohr, Harriet Morf, Elizabeth Araujo, Matthias Englbrecht, David Simon, Arnd Kleyer, Timo Meinderink, Wolfgang Vorbrüggen, Cay Benedikt von der Decken, Stefan Kleinert, Andreas Ramming…
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2021 23:112
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  10. Radiographs of the sacroiliac joints are commonly used for the diagnosis and classification of axial spondyloarthritis. The aim of this study was to develop and validate an artificial neural network for the de...

    Authors: Keno K. Bressem, Janis L. Vahldiek, Lisa Adams, Stefan Markus Niehues, Hildrun Haibel, Valeria Rios Rodriguez, Murat Torgutalp, Mikhail Protopopov, Fabian Proft, Judith Rademacher, Joachim Sieper, Martin Rudwaleit, Bernd Hamm, Marcus R. Makowski, Kay-Geert Hermann and Denis Poddubnyy
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2021 23:106
    Content type: Research article Published on:

  11. Ankylosing spondylitis (AS), as a common inflammatory rheumatic disease, often causes depression and impaired health-related quality of life (QoL). Although positive effects of patient education have been demo...

    Authors: Yuqing Song, Xia Xie, Yanling Chen, Ying Wang, Hui Yang, Anliu Nie and Hong Chen
    Citation: Arthritis Research & Therapy 2021 23:72
    Content type: Research article Published on:

    The Correction to this article has been published in Arthritis Research & Therapy 2021 23:149