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Effectiveness of Tele-rheumatology for Delivering High Quality Rheumatology Care During the COVID-19 Crisis (EVOLVE)

NCT04704544 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 652

Last updated 2026-02-20

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

While tele-rheumatology (TR) visits are a COVID-19 related necessity, there is a lack of rigorous data on the comparative effectiveness of TR versus (vs) in-person usual care (UC) especially in medically at-risk populations such as people with rheumatic and musculoskeletal disease (RMD) using immunosuppressive drugs (IS). This clear research gap was highlighted by the American College of Rheumatology in its recent Task Force Report on Telehealth in the COVID era. In this study, the investigators will rigorously evaluate the comparative effectiveness of TR visits for high risk people living with RMD and among those from socially vulnerable populations, in the COVID-19 era. This study is of key public health importance and relevance to rheumatology since it addresses the urgent clinical and policy needs to provide safe, efficacious, and equitable care to diverse patients with RMD during and beyond the COVID-19 crisis. Our proposal is very responsive to the RRF's Notice of Special interest on COVID-19 in improving the care of people with RMD during the COVID-19 pandemic. The investigators will perform the first randomized experiment of tele-rheumatology, generating high quality evidence to guide the use of this technology across diverse populations of people with RMDs. Beyond the high public health impact of this study for people with RMDs, the investigators expect that our findings will have high generalizability to other at-risk patient populations with multimorbidity and inform rheumatology practice into the foreseeable future.

Conditions

  • Rheumatic Diseases

Interventions

OTHER

Tele-rheumatology

Participants will receive virtual visits via video conferencing and/or phone.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • University of California, San Francisco

    collaborator OTHER

  • Tulane University

    collaborator OTHER

  • Rheumatology Research Foundation

    collaborator OTHER

  • University of Alabama at Birmingham

    lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
SINGLE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2021-09-15
Primary Completion
2023-11-30
Completion
2026-02-18

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

More Related Trials

Entities

Companies

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT04704544 on ClinicalTrials.gov