​Agrippa study; an additional strategy for self-management in chronic pain patients

• Background: For many patients, ongoing or recurrent pain severely impacts their physical, social and mental health, as it interrupts ongoing activities and thereby continuously interferes with daily life functioning. Over time, this impacts patients' sense of self and quality of life. To facilitate adherence to adaptive pain management strategies after interdisciplinary multimodal pain treatment, we developed an mHealth application (i.e. AGRIPPA app) that contains two behaviour regulation strategies; a valued-based goal setting procedure and a method for storing and facilitating retrieval of meaningful treatment experiences. Our objectives are: (1) to test the effectiveness of the AGRIPPA app on pain disability; (2) to determine the cost-effectiveness; and (3) to explore the levels of engagement and usability of app-users.
• Methods: We will perform a multicentre randomised controlled trial with two parallel groups. Within the 12-month inclusion period we plan to recruit 158 patients with chronic pain during the initial stage of their interdisciplinary treatment program in one of the six participating centres. Participants will be randomly assigned to the standard treatment condition or to the enhanced treatment condition in which they will receive the AGRIPPA app. Patients are enrolled at the start of the treatment program, end will be monitored until 12 months post-treatment. In our primary analysis we will evaluate the difference over time of pain related disability between the two conditions. Other outcome measures will include health related quality of life, illness perceptions, pain self-efficacy, app system usage data, productivity loss and healthcare expenses.
• This study will be the first step in systematically evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of the AGRIPPA app. After a three-year period of development and feasibility testing (Solace study), this formal evaluation will help determine to what extent the application will influence the maintenance of treatment gains over time. The outcomes of this trial will guide future decisions regarding uptake in clinical practice.

For more information see; Agrippaor https://husite.nl/agrippa/(in Dutch)

Principal investigator; Jan Pool PhD

Junior researcher; Else Scheffer MSc

Research team; Harriet Wittink PhD, Rob Smeets PhD and Stefan Elbers MSc, PhD candidate

Participants;