MEASuRE stands for ‘Maastricht Electronic Abdominal Symptom REporting‘ and is a patient-reported outcome measure (PROM), based on the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) or Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA). MEASuRE is specifically developed for symptom assessment in subjects experiencing abdominal complaints.
The most important features of MEASuRE are:
• Electronic recording of (abdominal) symptoms;
• Repeated measurements;
• Real-time assessment;
• Assessments during regular daily life;
• Consecutive recording of environmental, social and psychological factors.
The app is designed in a way that subjects will be requested to complete electronic assessments several times a day, at random moments, for seven consecutive days. Every assessment is initiated by an auditory signal and assessments are identical between all moments. Since MEASuRE is aimed at real-time or momentary symptom assessments, every assessment will be available for only 10 minutes after the auditory signal.
After completing MEASuRE for one week researchers and/or physicians will have access to a detailed overview of a patient’s abdominal complaints in combination with daily life factors, such as environment, social context and psychological status. These data can give rise to finding (individual) patterns and associations between complaints and influencing factors, which might lead to a better understanding of symptoms as well as to possible novel ideas for symptom treatment. Furthermore, these detailed overviews give the opportunity for patients to get insight into their day-to-day symptom pattern.
MEASuRE is currently only available for subjects that participate in a research project after the validation of this method in subjects with Irritable Bowel Syndrome, which was initiated in Maastricht UMC+, Maastricht, The Netherlands and is available in five languages: Dutch for the Netherlands, Dutch for Belgium, Swedish, English for the UK and English for the USA.