Digital Technology for Adolescents and Young Persons with Inflammatory Bowel Disease
About this PSP
The Digital Technology for Adolescents and Young Persons with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) PSP brought together adolescents and young persons, parents, carers, and health professionals to identify the most important research uncertainties in this area. The scope of the PSP defined adolescents and young persons as under the age of 25 years.
The priorities identified will help researchers guide their future plans for developing and evaluating new digital technologies for young people with IBD.
The Digital Technology for Adolescents and Young Persons with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) PSP Top 10 was published in January 2024.
PSP website
Articles and publications
Key documents
Digital Technology for Adolescents and Young Persons with Inflammatory Bowel Disease PSP protocol
The top 10
The most important questions
- How can digital technology give adolescents/young people with IBD, parents and carers easy and understandable access to medical history in one platform to include medical notes, track medication history, track results, generate alerts on abnormal results and book tests?
- How can digital technology make it easier for adolescents/young people with IBD to communicate with their regular nurse or doctor to signal the need for help including help with mood and emotions?
- Can a single digital platform be used in the NHS so that medical information for adolescents and young people with IBD, can be shared between different healthcare teams including GPs?
- How can digital technology help adolescents/young people with IBD with home testing and monitoring e.g. bloods/stool?
- Can digital technology make it easier and quicker to diagnose adolescents/young people with IBD?
- How can digital technology help adolescents/young people with IBD to feel more in control and independent with their IBD?
- Can digital technology support healthcare for adolescents/young people with IBD when they move from the children’s team to the adult team and can this improve patient experience?
- How can digital technology help adolescents/young people with IBD to feel supported with their care when they are first diagnosed?
- How can digital technology be used to allow adolescents/young people with IBD to contact the IBD team and other healthcare professionals in a timely manner?
- How can we make sure that big data generated by different digital technologies collect similar types of information so that it can be brought together to study long term impact in a real world setting and measure outcomes for young people with IBD?
The following questions were also discussed and put in order of priority at the workshop:
- How can digital technology make it easier for adolescents/young people with IBD to access and share their health documents and results?
- How can digital technologies complement or replace diagnostic tests such as endoscopy?
- How can digital technology be personalised to an adolescent/young persons symptoms and test results?
- How can digital technology help adolescents/young people with IBD to track non-IBD related symptoms to share with their IBD team alongside IBD symptoms?
- Can digital technology platforms make it easier for adolescents/young people with IBD to connect with similar people within the adolescent/young person IBD community for peer-support and a safe space to talk to each other?
- Will digital technology be able to predict what happens with an adolescent/young persons IBD in the future?
- How can wearable technology keep adolescents/young people with IBD well?
- How can patients link fitness and diet apps with IBD digital technology to identify patterns in symptoms?
Document downloads
For full details of all of the questions identified by this PSP, please see this PSP spreadsheet.