Improving How Arthritis Care Is Delivered
A Flexible and Personalized Approach to Arthritis Care
The Problem
How people receive care for their inflammatory arthritis is outdated and does not meet their needs. As a result, many people are not receiving the best care available, and this is even more so for people already facing healthcare inequities
The Solution
By optimizing the delivery of the highest quality of care available, we can have better health outcomes, reduce inequities, and avoid costs of under-treatment.
What the Study will do
We are co-designing, with patients and health care providers, an innovative way of delivering care called FlexCAre, which will use new technology to monitor people’s health and deliver care tailored to each person’s needs. We hope this flexible approach will better meet people’s needs and improve health.
The Research Study
This study will co-design and test a new way of delivering care for inflammatory arthritis called FlexCAre that takes advantage of digital health technology to monitor health and tailor care to each person’s situation. In this new model, patients will determine when they need care, how they receive it (e.g. in-person or virtually), and who they see (e.g. nurse or rheumatologist).
This research will introduce a more flexible and personalized approach to arthritis care, which caters to the individual needs of each person. This will ensure that everyone receives the best possible care and treatment, tailored to their specific condition.
Research Scientist
Diane Lacaille MDCM, MHSc, FRCPC
Scientific Director
Dr. Diane Lacaille is the Scientific Director and Senior Scientist at Arthritis Research Canada; as well as a Professor, Department of Medicine, at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver. She has a rheumatology practice in Vancouver, BC. She holds the Mary Pack Chair in Rheumatology Research from UBC and The Arthritis Society of Canada. She completed medical school and internal medicine training at McGill University in Montreal, and her Rheumatology training and a Master’s in Health Sciences, clinical epidemiology, at the University of British Columbia.
