IBDigital Project Starts at ECCO Conference in Berlin

The impact of IBD and the challenges in healthcare

Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), which includes Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, is a chronic and debilitating condition affecting millions of people worldwide. It is marked by unpredictable flares, where inflammation in the intestines worsens, causing pain, fatigue, digestive issues, and significant disruptions to daily life. For many, IBD is not just a medical condition—it is a constant challenge that affects physical health, mental well-being, work, social life, and overall quality of life.

With IBD cases rising globally, the disease places an increasing financial strain on healthcare systems, accounting for a substantial share of medical expenses due to hospitalizations, frequent clinic visits, and long-term treatments. The current IBD care system faces major challenges—many patients remain unseen or underserved, struggling with ongoing symptoms even in remission. Others could greatly benefit from better self-management strategies, but lack the tools or support to do so effectively. As healthcare systems become increasingly stretched, remote monitoring has emerged as a promising solution to relieve pressure on clinicians while empowering patients.

Digital biomarkers

Existing IBD telemonitoring platforms have proven to improve treatment adherence and reduced hospital admissions, but they rely on time-consuming questionnaires, which are difficult to sustain and often favor digitally literate and highly motivated individuals. This means that many patients still struggle to receive timely, personalized care.

The IBDigital project builds on new evidence suggesting that IBD flares can be predicted through passive monitoring of physiological and behavioral indicators, such as heart rate variability, sleep patterns, and activity levels. By replacing traditional, questionnaire-based tracking with wearable-driven, passive data collection, IBDigital aims to minimize patient burden, improve clinical decision-making, and enable proactive disease management. This approach not only helps patients better understand and manage their condition, but also supports healthcare professionals in providing more timely, data-driven interventions, ultimately making IBD care more effective, inclusive, and sustainable.

Experts about the impact of IBD

Dr. Marieke Pierik, Gastroenterologist and Professor Real World Data chronical diseases at Maastricht UMC+, emphasized the potential of digital biomarkers to transform IBD care:

‘By integrating wearable technology and digital biomarkers into telemonitoring platforms like MijnIBDCoach, we can significantly improve real-world data collection. This approach helps overcome challenges associated with active data collection, such as bias and digital literacy barriers, while also reducing the burden that traditional questionnaires place on patients.’

Menne Scherpenzeel, representing Crohn & Colitis NL, highlighted the importance of patient involvement:

‘This initiative ensures that digital health solutions are designed with input from the people who will use them. By engaging the IBD community throughout the project, we are making sure that digital biomarkers are practical, meaningful, and accessible.’

Partners

The IBDigital project is a public-private partnership, partially funded by Topsector Health Holland. It unites leading organizations from research, healthcare, and the pharmaceutical and medtech industries, including TNO, Maastricht UMC+, IBDream, Crohn & Colitis NL, AbbVie, Pfizer, Takeda, Corsano, McRoberts, Sananet, and Linus Bio.

What's next?

IBDigital will follow a structured three-year roadmap, including:

1. Retrospective data analysis to identify patterns in existing questionnaire data on symptoms, lifestyle, clinical, and quality of life in IBD.
2. Co-design of patient-centered digital biomarkers with people living with IBD.
3. Conducting a longitudinal clinical study using wearable technology in people with IBD.
4. Developing a roadmap for large scale clinical adoption with all relevant stakeholders.

IBDigital is set to deliver a validated, clinically useful digital biomarker for IBD flare detection, supported by an industry-wide adoption strategy. The ECCO launch marks the start of an exciting journey towards a more patient-centric, data-driven approach to IBD care, with the potential to redefine chronic disease management worldwide.