Introduction Chronic disease management represents a big challenge to the NHS. The IBD standards specify the use of IT to support patient care and to optimise clinical management through data collection and audit. The development of innovative patient care pathways are required to meet these challenges as well as the Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention (QIPP) agenda. ‘My Health Record’ is a secure web-based service built on the Microsoft HealthVault platform, which allows storage of health information from many sources in one secure online location. The IBD team and UHS IT department, in collaboration with web developers, GetReal, have designed this pilot website with the objective of improving patient access and care.

Methods The IBD portal aims to provide an email based ‘Flareline’, record current and past medication history, inform patients of upcoming outpatient and endoscopy appointments, allow patient access to verified relevant investigation results, food/stool/health diaries and to provide tailored care plans with email and SMS reminders. We are taking advantage of existing innovative technologies, such as Smartphones capable of ‘Near Field Communication’ (NFC) and NFC enabled weight scales. These weight scales upload data directly to patient records, where aims and parameters are set, which alert the clinician to the progress of the patient.

Results The pilot IBD portal was launched in September 2012. We have recruited n = 55 patients over 5 months, with n = 19 patients completing the registration process. The most commonly used function of the service to date has been the email ‘Flareline’ and messaging service. These enquiries were answered with in one day for ‘Flareline’ messages and 1.8 days for non-urgent messages. Three patients have been supplied with NFC enabled weight scales with all patients using the devices regularly. The data collected using the NFC devices has lead to reliable clinical data and timely changes in treatment, particularly dietetic input.

Conclusion IBD is a chronic disease with a spectrum of clinical activity effecting quality of life and occurs in a significant proportion of patients in working age. The development of a web-based IBD portal is an innovative addition to IBD services with a potential to improve patient care and will lead to the development of new patient care pathways in collaboration with local care commissioning groups. We aim to improve cost effectiveness by reducing outpatient visits, reducing work load from phone based flareline enquiries and, provide more information on local IBD services for patients. Challenges to the IBD pilot so far have been to engage patients in this new model of care for chronic disease management.

Disclosure of Interest None Declared.