Management of Irritable Bowel Syndrome in Primary Care: a Feasibility Randomised Controlled Trial Seminar

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a common chronic gastrointestinal disorder that affects 10 – 22% of the UK population and costs the NHS over 200 million pounds a year. IBS symptoms affect quality of life, social functioning and time off work. A recent Cochrane review highlighted the lack of evidence for the current drug management. Furthermore, face to face Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) has been shown to be helpful for IBS reducing symptom scores and improving QOL measures but availability in primary care is limited and CBT in this format has not been found to be cost effective.

Our aim is to pilot a factorial RCT to assess the effectiveness of the prescribed medications in UK general practice for IBS: mebeverine (an anti-spasmodic) and methylcellulose (bulking-agent) against placebo and Regul8, a CBT based self-management website for IBS developed specifically for this study using Lifeguide.

I would like to talk to you about the main aspects involved in the management of our trial and the opportunities and challenges that researchers face when they use a web-based intervention to administer the participants’ information and collect all their data. I would also like to discuss some of the ethical and social implications of using web-based interventions to deliver therapies and collect confidential data.

The following questions will also be discussed:

• From your perspective, which are the main ethical issues that researchers face when information is saved on a server and it is exported in order to be collected?
• Are we increasing social inequality in health care creating psychological web-based interventions to be delivered within the NHS?