Dr Regueiro discusses the 'medical home' approach being used at Cleveland Clinic in which gastroenterologists, surgeons, behavioral therapists, dieticians, and pharmacists collaborate to care for the whole patient with IBD.

Miguel Regueiro, MD, is a professor of medicine and chief of Digestive Disease Institute at Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio.

TRANSCRIPT:

I am Dr. Miguel Regueiro. I'm the chief of Digestive Disease Institute at Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. ACG 2025 has been full of activity, engagement, great discussions, and wonderful presentations. There have been several IBD highlights, but what I'd like to present is something that we've been working at Cleveland Clinic —our medical home for inflammatory bowel disease.

Just as a background, the medical home is a concept by which we have a group of providers from gastroenterologists, surgeons, behavioral health, dieticians, pharmacists, to take care of the whole person, the whole patient. Our next version of this is now including digital health. So how can we actually interact with the patients even on a daily basis about patient reported outcomes using digital technology and advancing the field around this medical home, what we call 2.0, kind of getting to this next level of treatment for these patients.

So digital health, really, and the context that we're looking at this at Cleveland Clinic is actually an app-based approach. It enhances our medical home and it's an app the patient has on their phone. They can actually report their symptoms, patient reported symptoms on a daily basis. We can monitor and track, we can look at diet, behavioral health, and interestingly, what we found is some of our patients, especially those younger, so under the age of 45, almost preferred to interact with healthcare through their app, through their phone. I think the way the world is headed, we're becoming more and more digital. We have more and more apps, and healthcare is not exclusive in considering this. So we're finding our Medical Home 2.0 is almost this app-based approach to patient care. It doesn't replace the person. I still think that that's quite important, but it also allows us to use artificial intelligence to algorithmically understand what's important to the patient and how to meet their needs on a very patient-centered approach.