Project Lead
Patrick Hilley
Lead partner
Austin Health
MacHSR Future Leaders Fellowship Program (cohort 1).
Increasing patient numbers and increasing treatment costs in IBD are stretching IBD health service resources. The current funding model is not sufficient to meet the increasing needs of these patients. In time we may not be able to keep up with these increasing demands without negatively impacting the care provided to this often complex and difficult to care for patient cohort.
This project will investigate whether a virtual biologic clinic could have a positive impact on healthcare utilisation and patient reported outcomes with the overarching goal of determining if it could help deliver an alternative funding model, values-based healthcare.
In a landscape of escalating IBD prevalence and associated economic burden across Australia this project is assessing values-based healthcare as a model to deliver quality care through the use of virtual biologics clinics.
A dual-site pilot parallel cohort study was designed during the fellowship and the protocol ranked number one priority study at ANZ Inflammatory Bowel Disease Consortium 2022. Recruitment has commenced and funding was obtained from Janssen Pharmaceuticals for the procurement of a novel electronic patient reported outcomes platform.
Virtual biologics clinics are anticipated to reduce costs of IBD care, but the findings of this study will identify the impact on healthcare utilisation and value of healthcare delivery, in addition to informing the evaluation of values-based healthcare as a model of care for other chronic diseases.
This project has formed the basis of a PhD at University of Melbourne.