IBD Tool: development of a web application for the monitoring of patients with Inflammatory Bowel Diseases

IBD tool is a project born from the collaboration of the Mauriziano Hospital in Turin and the Links Foundation, with the aim of developing a web application to support the monitoring of patients affected by IBD(inflammatory bowel disease). IBDs are chronic diseases that affect the gastrointestinal tract causing, among other symptoms, abdominal pain, diarrhea, rectal bleeding and weight loss. The cause of IBDs is uncertain, and the only treatments that can be applied focus on trying to reduce the burden of the disease. People affected by IBD undergo periods of remission of the illness, with less symptoms detected, and periods of relapse, when the disease's symptoms are heavier. A very important part of the treatment is the follow up process, with continuous monitoring of the symptoms of the patient, that has to periodically describe to the doctors the effects of the disease and degree of impact on daily life. In this situation, the use of telemedicine is well suited as an integration to the follow up process, making it easier for the patient to better follow the indications of the doctors, with no need to worry going to the hospital when not necessary. The goal of IBD tool is to provide an efficient monitoring system to connect patients and doctors reducing the need to go to the hospital. With the use of well known questionnaires, patients can describe to their doctors the symptoms of the illness in a fast and efficient manner. These questionnaires are sent periodically to the patients for compilation, but when in particular need, a patient can decide to compile a questionnaire at any moment. Doctors are always notified of the compilation of new questionnaires, and can evaluate the details anytime. To facilitate the communication between patients and doctors, a chat system is available on the platform, allowing for faster communication, for instant messaging and sending clinical files. The work of this thesis focused on the optimization of the platform architecture, improving its overall efficiency and providing more scalability, and the development of new functionalities to further enrich the platform with more features. To improve the platform functionalities, the already existing dashboard of the application has been extended to support new analysis: number of patients on remission or relapse from different points of view, such as gender, duration of illness, age groups, type of illness and others. More analysis were provided on the compiled questionnaires, such as questionnaires compiled by gender and total number of questionnaires by type of questionnaire. On the patient perspective, a new satisfactory questionnaire was developed to assess the degree of satisfaction with the platform and receive suggestions on the possible improvements. To further improve the usability of the system, a FAQ(Frequent Asked Questions) section was developed to provide answers to the most common questions of the patients.