FOREUM Call for Research Proposals on E-Health

Support for innovative projects seeking to integrate technology into care for people living with rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases (RMDs).

FOREUM Foundation for Research in Rheumatology, based in Switzerland, is an independent research organisation working in the field of rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases. FOREUM is supported by EULAR, the European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology.

FOREUM has issued the Call for Research Proposals on E-Health to support projects that focus on stimulating application-driven research and innovations that will improve the health of people living with rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases (RMDs), for instance via personalised treatment approaches, both at the individual and population level. This call concerns the impactful integration of technology into care for people living with RMDs rather than the development of new hardware or software. Projects will be evaluated for sustainability in long-term patient care.

The World Health Organization defines e-health as the cost-effective and secure use of information and communications technologies in support of health and health-related fields, including health care services, health surveillance, health literature and health education, knowledge and research.

The rapid development of user-friendly technologies and diverse interfaces between patients and health care professionals continues to increase the impact that e-health has on the delivery of health care in different fields of medicine including that of RMDs. While promising, there are challenges to ensure that e-health makes health care more efficient and more responsive to people’s needs and expectations.

This call aims to help those living with RMDs to:

• Gain insight into their own health, related to daily functioning and (inter)related determinants.
• Manage their health and daily functioning.
• Contribute to health research (ie citizen science) using health (related) data.

FOREUM welcomes projects that innovate within the area of e-health in RMDs by including several of the following dimensions:

• Making health care more efficient and resilient, and decreasing health care costs eg by enhanced communication possibilities and direct patient involvement.
• Reflecting on ethical challenges and issues associated with information collection, sharing and privacy.
• Increasing evidence-based approaches and concepts to e-health tools and interventions.
• Using e-health approaches to empower people living with RMD in their self-management as well as health care providers to have optimal access to information for decision making and strategy definition.
• Providing novel tools for education of underserved areas in the RMD health care ecosystem.
• Enabling better access to optimal care and information for underserved people living with RMDs, in particular those facing socio-demographic or geographic challenges.
• Building new relationships between health professionals and/or people living with RMDs in a next generation partnership that supports optimal shared decision making.
• Stimulating initiatives to make e-health accessible to all persons living with RMDs eg by optimising e-health approaches and technologies for people living with disability and limitations.

Participation of patient research partners is strongly recommended for all research projects to provide experiential knowledge, with the aim of improving the relevance, quality and validity of the research process.