Effectiveness of Tele-rheumatology for Delivering High Quality Rheumatology Care During the COVID-19 Crisis (EVOLVE)

Completed · Not applicable

Conditions studied: Rheumatic Diseases

In brief

While tele-rheumatology (TR) visits are a COVID-19 related necessity, there is a lack of rigorous data on the comparative effectiveness of TR versus (vs) in-person usual care (UC) especially in medically at-risk populations such as people with rheumatic and musculoskeletal disease (RMD) using immunosuppressive drugs (IS). This clear research gap was highlighted by the American College of Rheumatology in its recent Task Force Report on Telehealth in the COVID era. In this study, the investigators will rigorously evaluate the comparative effectiveness of TR visits for high risk people living with RMD and among those from socially vulnerable populations, in the COVID-19 era. This study is of key public health importance and relevance to rheumatology since it addresses the urgent clinical and policy needs to provide safe, efficacious, and equitable care to diverse patients with RMD during and beyond the COVID-19 crisis. Our proposal is very responsive to the RRF's Notice of Special interest on COVID-19 in improving the care of people with RMD during the COVID-19 pandemic. The investigators will perform the first randomized experiment of tele-rheumatology, generating high quality evidence to guide the use of this technology across diverse populations of people with RMDs. Beyond the high public health impact of this study for people with RMDs, the investigators expect that our findings will have high generalizability to other at-risk patient populations with multimorbidity and inform rheumatology practice into the foreseeable future.

Key facts

Study ID

NCT04704544

Run by

University of Alabama at Birmingham

People needed

652

Starts

2021-09-15

Expected to finish

2026-02-18

Last updated by the study team

2026-02-20

Who can join

Age: 18 and older. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: not accepted.

You may qualify if…

• Diagnosis of rheumatic disease (e.g. rheumatoid arthritis, SLE)

You may not qualify if…

• unstable rheumatic disease that needs in-person visits (e.g. recent diagnosis of severe lupus nephritis)
• expected in-office procedures (e.g., joint injection)
• lack of access to phone

Where it is running

• University of Alabama at Birmingham — Birmingham, Alabama, United States

Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov

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