Self‐reported treatment effectiveness for Crohn's disease using a novel crowdsourcing web‐based platform

Abstract

Background and AimsInternet and social media platforms have become an unprecedented source for sharing self‐experience, potentially allowing the collection and integration of health data with patient experience. StuffThatWorks (STW) is an online open platform that applies machine learning and the power of crowdsourcing, where patients with chronic medical conditions can self‐report and compare their individual outcomes using a structured online questionnaire. We aimed to conduct a cross‐sectional, international, crowdsourcing, artificial‐intelligence (AI) web‐based study of patients with Crohn's disease (CD) self‐reporting their outcomes.MethodsA proprietary STW Bayesian inference model was built to measure improvement in CD severity (on scale of 1–5) for each treatment and ranked treatments using effectiveness. The effectiveness of first‐line biological treatments was analyzed by multiple comparisons and by calculating odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals for each treatment pair.ResultsWe included 7593 self‐reported CD patients for the analysis. Most of the participants were female (75.8%) and from English‐speaking countries (95.7%). Overall, anti‐TNF drugs were the most reported tried treatment (52.8%). Infliximab (IFX) was ranked as the most effective treatment by the STW effectiveness model followed by bowel surgery (second), adalimumab (ADA, third), ustekinumab (UST, 4rd), and vedolizumab (VDZ, fifth). In paired comparison analyses, IFX was most effective, ADA had similar effectiveness compared to UST and all three were more effective than VDZ.ConclusionWe present the first online crowdsourcing AI platform‐based study of self‐reported treatment effectiveness in CD. Net‐based crowdsourcing patient‐reported outcome platforms can potentially help both clinicians and patients select the best treatment for their condition.

Surfing the web as a patient with IBD: New horizons

“…In this issue, Engel et al provide new and useful information about how these resources can be applied for research. 15 Here, StuffThatWorks (www.stuffthatworks.health), a platform designed to collect clinical information from chronic conditions using a machine learning algorithm, was used to gather patient experience on different medical treatments for CD. The authors showed that anti-TNF agents were ranked as the most effective by patients, followed by ustekinumab and vedolizumab, respectively.…”

UEG onwards & upwards: A president's perspective

“…For all gastroenterology, all the way to use AI tools such as ChatGPT or SciScope, we need to evaluate these tools in patient care. 10 Implementation where and when helpful and clear guidelines are pivotal and ideally published in our journal.…”