| Interventions |
The interventions are the IBDsmart and IBDoc smartphone apps. The duration of the intervention is 12 months. IBDsmart is an app that allows inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients to regularly fill in symptom scores and get them sent to their doctor. It is used by the patients by logging in and filling out a questionnaire (Crohn's Disease Activity Index for Crohn's disease and Simple Clinical Colitis Activity Index for ulcerative colitis). When they fill out the questionnaire, a score is produced which indicates the severity of the disease. This way long term trends of symptom scores are kept on the smartphone and the health care team can be contacted immediately via the app in cases where disease severity is high. IBDoc is an app that allows IBD patients to measure their faecal calprotectin levels and get their results sent to their doctor. The way the app works is the participant provides a stool sample which is analysed using a medical device which produces an output that can be read via the camera by an app built into IBDoc called CalApp. CalApp communicates with IBDoc which produces a faecal calprotectin score which is high, medium, or low; the level indicates how much physical disease activity is occurring in the patient. These results can also be sent to the healthcare professional team. The use of IBDsmart and IBDoc together allows both clinical and laboratory-based information to be assessed at home by the patient and sent to their medical team. The apps can be used as often as the participants want and can be sent to their medical team at any time. If the patient wishes to report a flare they can prompt the app to send the results immediately. The information from the apps will be used to determine if the disease is in remission |