Allergan plc announced a collaboration with SonarMD, a leader in population health management, on the development of clinical decision support (CDS) and patient engagement tools which can be used to facilitate physician identification of patients suffering from Irritable Bowel Syndrome with Diarrhoea (IBS-D) in clinical practice and monitor their treatment outcomes. Moreover, the companies will establish a patient engagement platform which can be used to evaluate symptoms and health outcomes among patients with IBS-D in a real-world clinical setting.

This platform allows healthcare practitioners to securely engage, monitor, and manage IBS-D patients between visits via ongoing health assessments evaluating patient symptoms, quality of life, and treatment impacts. Data from these assessments can alert physicians to any change in a patient's condition that may require intervention, which could lead to improved health outcomes for patients and decreased costs of care. This platform will also provide an opportunity to generate real-world data on the impact of current treatment options for patients with IBS-D.

SonarMD is the developer of a cloud-based care management platform - created by noted gastroenterologist Lawrence Kosinski, MD, MBA and Managing Partner, Illinois Gastroenterology Group - that supports improved patient access, care coordination and healthcare management for patients with chronic illnesses. The SonarMD platform delivers care management algorithms to help providers and patients dramatically improve the management of chronic diseases in the new era of value-based care. SonarMD has previously applied this technology to support patients with Crohn's Disease, combining the use of clinical metrics derived from CDS tools with patient reported outcomes.

Allergan and SonarMD will leverage the Sonar platform for use with IBS-D patients with the goal of optimizing efficient diagnosis and effective use of treatment options to manage IBS-D in clinical practice. This represents the first application of the SonarMD platform for IBS.

"The collaboration with SonarMD is a further demonstration of Allergan's long-term commitment to improving the lives of patients with IBS-D through better patient care and access to innovative treatments," said Gavin Corcoran, M.D., chief medical officer, Allergan. "The sooner patients can be effectively identified and diagnosed, the sooner they can receive the treatments they need to alleviate the burdensome symptoms of IBS-D."

"Traditionally, the limited diagnostic and therapeutic options available for patients suffering from irritable bowel syndrome, combined with the reluctance of those patients to discuss their symptoms with healthcare practitioners, has presented a major barrier to providing them with the most effective care. The collaboration between SonarMD and Allergan is focused on developing tools which will help providers more efficiently identify IBS-D patients, deliver quality care and, simultaneously, foster meaningful patient engagement," said Jonathan Rosenberg, SonarMD's medical director. "I am excited about the potential for this project to generate meaningful patient reported data which will lead to better care outcomes for all IBS-D sufferers through more effective care delivery from their providers."

Irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhoea (IBS-D) is a functional bowel disorder characterized by chronic abdominal pain and frequent diarrhoea, which affects approximately 15 million patients in the US.  Although the exact cause of IBS-D is not known, symptoms are thought to result from a disturbance in the way the gastrointestinal tract and nervous system interact.

IBS-D can be debilitating and there are limited therapeutic options for managing the chronic symptoms. IBS-D is associated with economic burden in direct medical costs and indirect social costs such as absenteeism and lost productivity, along with decreased quality of life.