CARNet : Self-Monitoring and Co-driving in Rheumatology With Internet : Rheumatoid Arthritis Cohort (Usual Care Study) (CARNet)

Recommendations of care in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) advocate for patient involvement and management of his/her own health.

The observation of the sole rate of use of websites specialized health patients might indicate that this involvement is occurring for a large number. Indeed, yet in 2010, more than 71% of French Netizen used the Internet to search for information related to their health according to a 2012 survey from the French National Order of Medical Doctors. Focusing on rheumatology, 68% of French patients have already used the Internet to search for information related to their arthritis as shown from a 2012 survey of the French Society of Rheumatology. In this medical field, these results reflect the fact that in France since years 2000, patients' associations and institutions, edited websites to offer patients a direct and easier access to information on diseases or treatments.

Nevertheless, it is useful to observe the type of service provided to the patient on these sites: the majority of these sites, even the most recent offer only the dissemination of information and never have been studied on this informative nature. These sites should be considered as an introductory step toward patient involvement.

Indeed, patients involvement is effective if they are really "active" and produce data, e.g. when him(her)self notes personal information online, manages a 'health book' virtual or self-assessing internet. In other words, involvement makes sense when it contributes to an "improvement" doctor-patient exchanges and when at last it leads to an increase in entropy.

Especially the latter type of use, i.e. the patient self-reported measure (patient-reported outcomes), can be a manner to both involve the patient in his care, and to feed the medical decision support with the certified rheumatologist. Moreover, it appears that the self-measurements in particular by the RA patient, are reliable.

In recent years, new services on the web or mobile begun to address this need and allowed patients to report issues relating to their health (current treatments, etc..), and to perform self-measures (pain, activity, morning stiffness, etc..). Notwithstanding visibility increasingly strong, it is striking to note that these tools, including those for self-measurement, have been little evaluated in terms of impact, for example on doctor-patient exchanges.

Indeed, Investigators have chosen to measure the characteristics of these exchanges, as perceived by the patient: effectiveness, quality and overall quality of care using dedicated tools.

In France, the patient protection committee (CPP) has ranked this study in "Soins Courants" (Usual Care).

The study will use the web-based platform (*) Sanoia.com, partner of the French Society of Rheumatology, which provides a trusted environment to its users via anonymity. This platform is recognized as innovative by the French Ministry of Research and relies on a data hosting architecture approved by the Ministry of Health. The statistical analysis of users data is limited to research purposes and placed under the dual supervision of patient associations and medical societies. These features are the source of its success in terms of audience with patients (> 145,000 health records created in September 2012).

Specifically Sanoia offers, among other benefits, Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) patients to list their medical history and access to tools for self-measures, whether generic (e.g. notepad symptoms, followed by medications taken, etc.), or more specific to RA (e.g. RAPID3: routine assessment of patient index data, Health Assessment Questionnaire, Rheumatoid Arthritis Impact of Disease (RAID) score. Based on these data, a customized selection of information (based on an Internet monitoring performed by patient association ANDAR and validated by the medical society SFR) is displayed.

The main objective of this study is to quantify with RA patients the effect of a website (Sanoia) on the quality of patient-doctor interactions, as perceived by the patient using the french translations of the physician investigator to investigate the perceived efficacy ot the patient-physician relationship (PEPPI) Questionnaire during the 12 months observation period.

(*) : SANOIA is a personal health record platform that does not embed or to connect to social networks.