ADCompanion - Remote Interdisciplinary Care for Atopic Dermatitis Using a Digital Care Companion: Protocol for a Multicenter Randomized Trial (Preprint)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Atopic dermatitis (AD) is one of the most common chronic inflammatory skin diseases, associated with itching, sleep disturbance, and impaired quality of life. Structured patient education can improve disease outcomes, but in-person programs are often unavailable in rural or underserved areas. Digital interventions may help overcome these barriers; however, their efficacy compared with routine care has not been evaluated. Objective: This study aims to assess whether a digitally delivered, interdisciplinary care concept (ADCompanion) is noninferior to routine, real-world care, as available in well-served areas, in reducing disease severity among patients with AD. Secondary objectives include effects on quality of life, pruritus, psychosocial burden, family well-being, and health care costs. Methods: This is a prospective, multicenter, 2-arm, 1:1 randomized noninferiority trial. Participants are stratified by age and disease severity. The intervention group receives standard therapy plus access to a digital platform with training modules and optional video consultations on skin care, nutrition, and psychosocial support. The control group receives routine care, optionally including face-to-face group training where available, and a basic app version for symptom tracking. The primary endpoint is physician-assessed disease severity (Scoring Atopic Dermatitis Index [SCORAD]) at 6 months; secondary endpoints include patient-reported outcomes, itch, quality of life, and disease-related costs. Results: Recruitment of 603 participants across 7 centers in Germany was completed. Data collection was finalized in June 2025. At the time of protocol submission (February 2026), data cleaning had been completed, and the statistical analysis plan was finalized; final results are expected to be published in 2026. Conclusions: This protocol describes a randomized trial designed to evaluate whether digitally delivered interdisciplinary care is noninferior to routine care for patients with AD. The findings of this study will inform the role of digital patient education as a complementary component within established care structures.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.027 | 0.025 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.007 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.008 | 0.006 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.006 | 0.009 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.074 | 0.013 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".