Development and Validation of a Platform to Assess and Improve Barriers to Health for Digitally Underserved Populations

Responsive Health, Inc., Secaucus NJ

Investigators

Abstract

Project Summary: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic disabling disease that leads to poor quality of life among otherwise young healthy adults. Underserved and minority populations bear a higher disease burden with more hospitalizations and less use of gastroenterology specialty care and of maintenance medications to prevent flares. The goal of this proposal ?Development and Validation of a Platform to Assess and Improve Barriers to Health for Digitally Underserved Populations is to build features on a unique Digital Prescribing Platform that will allow patient centered reporting of social determinants of health (SDoH) and digital barriers to care with an aim to address health disparities in patients with IBD. AIM I: Develop SDoH and digital disparities module to augment existing Remote Monitoring Platform and enable reporting of barriers at the individual patient, provider and practice levels to determine disparities in symptoms, care and self-management. Hypothesis: Using customized digital tools, patients will provide information about their SDoH and digital connectivity, digital skills and disease-management barriers that can be summarized for providers at the level of the individual patient, the provider and the health system AIM II. Pilot test the SDoH and digital disparities module. We will assess feasibility, usability and adoption of the newly developed module among 50 English and Spanish speaking patients with IBD. Hypothesis: Ability to prescribe language-specific module through Smartphone, text messages or interactive voice response (IVR) will maximize adoption in underserved communities. Anticipated Impact: Development of SDoH and digital disparities module will allow us to prescribe digital medicine to population that needs it the most and help bridge digital gap through digital inclusion lens.