Quicker Test for Psoriatic Arthritis Patients

A recent study showed that the Psoriatic Arthritis Impact of Disease 12-Item Questionnaire (PsAID-12) can be administered via a touch screen as feasibly as with pencil and paper. The study was conducted by Fausto Salaffi of the Rheumatology Department at the Polytechnic University of Marche in Ancona, Italy and was published in Therapeutics and Clinical Risk Management on April 21, 2016.

The PsAID-12 was designed to assess the physical and psychological factors associated with psoriatic arthritis treatments. The researchers undertook this study because collecting data electronically “may affect the interaction among the questionnaire, the respondents, and the way of delivery, thus altering the properties of survey questionnaire responses,” they say. This study was intended to scientifically evaluate the touch screen mode of delivering the PsAID-12.

There were 159 participants in the study, who were grouped by disease pattern: monoarthritis, oligoarthritis, polyarthritis, and psoriatic arthritis.

The researchers say, “We developed a multimedia touch screen tablet applications, denominated PsAID-12 touch screen, according to the set of requirements for designing handheld computer systems for electronic collection of patient’s diary and questionnaire data.” All participants completed both the traditional pencil and paper version of the PsAID-12 and the electronic version.

Additionally, they completed a short set of questions about using the touch screen.

The researchers report, “There was good comparability between paper-and-pencil scores and touchscreen scores.” T

hey also found that “the majority of subjects prefers completing the touch screen questionnaire in comparison with the paper-and-pencil PsAID-12 questionnaire.” However, they caution that “repeatability of touch screen PsAID-12 questionnaire has not be studied,” which is an important limitation.

The advantages of direct data entry and ease of use make further study of electronic data collection, particularly in the case of the PsAID-12 worth the effort. The researchers conclude “Future applications exist for use of validated touch screen versions of PsAID-12 questionnaire. These include web-based clinical and research applications, and the rapidly growing field of telemedicine.”