The new COVID-19 UK IBD Tool for patients is now live. The tool aims to help you and your team to identify and reach your moderate and high-risk IBD patients. This is to support and complement the work you and your trust may already be doing, and ensure as many patients as possible are reached.

About the tool

(developed by the IBD Registry through the COVID-19 working group with BSG support)

The tool is designed to support clinical teams to identify moderate and high-risk IBD patients in a robust and consistent way. This is part of our efforts to identify patients so that people at high risk can be shielded and provided with a package of care. It will also enable ongoing contact with those patients if needed. The tool is aligned with the recommendations of the IBD risk grid.

The tool allows patients to input their own information, and shows them which risk group they fall into. It meets full information government requirements and is secure, using the IBD Registry’s existing secure data hosting facility at AIMES. This enables information to be sent to hospital IBD teams so they can validate it and use it to support their patients. It can also be sent to relevant NHS bodies, as approved. For those teams who have managed to identify and contact their patients already through their own systems, patient uploaded data will provide a useful cross reference.

What to do next

We’re looking to disseminate the tool as widely as possible and are collaborating with IBD patient organisations to achieve this. If you are able to, we would encourage you contact your IBD patients and ask them to enter their details on the tool, so that they can receive appropriate support during the pandemic. We’re also publicising the tool via other channels including patient organisations and social media. The Crohn’s & Colitis UK helpline team are briefed to handle patients’ questions about the tool.

Support and resources

You will find a template letter below that you might want to use for contacting your patients. It tells them about the tool and how to access it. The Risk Grid can be found here.

More information is available on the IBD Registry website’s COVID-19 page.

For teams participating in the IBD Registry, the webtool and PMS have been modified to support this effort, and you should have received a separate email about this. If you have any queries about the COVID-19 UK IBD tool, please contact [email protected].

Thank you again for your continued assistance with this vital task, representing a collaborative effort to support clinicians and patients in the IBD community.

Cathryn Edwards, BSG President

Stuart Bloom, IBD Registry Medical Director

Ian Arnott, IBD Section Chair