Chronic and complex illnesses may represent the minority of the patients, seeking the attention in our healthcare today. However these illnesses consume the majority of the Healthcare expenditure, as they require a specialty care and their complications can be life threatening. While effective therapies are available, without careful monitoring their effectiveness as well as  patient or physician adherence to these; devastating complications, loss of productivity  and long lasting deformities can happen.
Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is one of these chronic illnesses affecting 1. 3 million  adults in U. S. population.  It is characterized by an autoimmune (patient’s own immune system attacking and leading to an) inflammation in the lining of the joint capsule and the lining of tendons. RA can cause not only crippling chronic joint pain, but can lead to permanent joint damage, and loss of joint function. This illness is a major reason for loss of productivity as well as decreased quality of life in the affected patients. In most cases, the patient is totally dependent on the physician to control their disease activity and have very little participation, other then being compliant to take their medications and keep their appointments. This is what is expected of them and considered to be the standard of care today. When and if their access is somehow interrupted by another illness, or  a loss of insurance or changing of their physician;  the patient totally loose their ability to monitor the activity of their illness and get lost in the follow up. They can loose their job and insurance  due to time loss from work and end up with deformities and complications, only fueling the fire in this vicious cycle.

This is where the Cliexa-RA app can be very helpful to the patient to keep track of their illness, outside the physician clinics. A well proven and accepted Heath care tool, easy enough to be utilized by the patient, will increase their own awareness of the disease activity and seek prompt attention before serious complications develop. In addition, if their physicians obtain their objective and reliable data, before the clinical visit, they can arrange an earlier visit or change the medication comfortably.
The patient utilizing this system will also have a chance to see the effects of the medications which will  make them much more compliant with their therapy.  So, we anticipate that this application will increase patient compliance and relieve their anxiety of the unknown, before each clinical visit, while allowing  their physician to monitor their  progress effectively. If this happens, we can hope that this will improve the overall well being and the outcome of the patients utilizing this application.

 

Bahri Bilir, MD, FACP, FAASLD

Medical Director of Liver Transplantation,
Presbyterian St Luke’s Hospital Denver Colorado

PR.com Official Press Release

Feb. 11, 2016 – Collaborative Network 4 Clinical Excellence, LLC (CN4CE) has just launched their first mobile chronic disease tracking application, cliexa-RA. cliexa-RA is available for iOS devices in the App Store. It tracks medications, symptoms and disease activity for Rheumatoid Arthritis. The Clinical Excellence Algorithms concept, cliexa™, is the healthcare technology product line for CN4CE which is built on published and recognized scientific quantitative models that translate chronic disease activity into a scoring model.

The Genesis of cliexa™ originated with the idea of applying mobile technology to help optimize chronic disease care. cliexaTM utilizes mobile applications to help patients more accurately track key disease activity indicators used by their physicians to make decisions about their care plan. While CN4CE focuses on Clinical Excellence Networks (CEN) and Disease Management Algorithms/Protocols, cliexa™ interfaces with end users, enabling patients to track daily chronic disease symptoms as well as medications.

cliexa™ is a powerful communication layer for end users to sync with physicians, clinics and other healthcare providers for disease activity tracking and reporting. It also integrates well with cliexa™ web protocols to update Disease Protocols, managed by Medical Directors (CEN) along with the physicians who are experts in their respective specialties.

CN4CE’s Lance Goudzwaard said, “It is hard to remember your RA symptoms and accurately communicate it to physicians during visits.” Dr. Robert Spencer has been integral in developing cliexa-RA,  a tool which allows RA patients to calculate and follow their disease activity using an accepted disease activity measure called the DAS-28. Dr. Spencer stated that, “In today’s demanding medical environment physicians have limited time to gather relevant data, much less calculate an activity index. With an easily used technology application, patients can be instrumental in helping their doctors determine their disease activity, which, in turn, can lead to better informed treatment decisions.”   With cliexa-RA we are offering a free mobile application to achieve this goal. CN4CE Co-Founder and the Scientific Director Dr. Esra Nutku-Bilir said, “cliexa-RA is one step forward in healthcare. The goal has been to design a tool to provide a service based on a need in healthcare… cliexa-RA is designed to gather real life data, which may provide a service tool for patients, physicians, health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, with an immense potential to reach out to every aspect of healthcare, today and in the future”.

Bahri Bilir MD FACP FAASLD, could not hide his excitement: “I found this app to be a very important step in realizing the vision of CN4CE, to provide tools to achieve best outcomes in complex chronic illnesses. The simplicity of this app, will allow patients with RA, without anybody’s help, utilize a well accepted and validated scientific tool, to continuously assess and monitor the activity of their illness. I believe that it will improve their adherence to the medications, when they are in remission. In the possibility of a flare, they will be able to see the warning signs, and reach out to their physicians earlier, before they develop deformities or costly ER visits and hospitalizations.”

CN4CE Co-Founder and CEO Mehmet Kazgan added, “Our ultimate vision is to adapt this modular system to other chronic diseases where certain data or clinical indices have been shown to have evidence-based utility in disease and treatment monitoring.”

About CN4CE
CN4CE staff consists of executive healthcare professionals, physicians, scientists and technologists. CN4CE was founded originally in 2011 focusing on Dr. Bahri Bilir’s evidence based disease algorithms concept which has a patent pending status.