Final symposium of the TARISMA research network

On 23 April 2024, the final symposium of the BMBF-funded research network TARISMA (Targeted Risk Management in Musculoskeletal Diseases) took place at the DRFZ. From 2020 to 2023, six subprojects investigated the existence of gaps in care for particularly vulnerable people (children, pregnant women, patients with serious comorbidities) and people with chronic pain syndromes and the measures which can be used to improve interdisciplinary care. In addition to four groups from the DRFZ’s Epidemiology Programme Area, the Department of Pharmacoepidemiology at BIPS in Bremen and the Institute of Community Medicine at Greifswald University Hospital were involved in TARISMA.

The extensive research results have shown, among other things, that young people with rheumatic diseases, just like their healthy peers, are all too often physically inactive, that interstitial lung diseases in rheumatoid arthritis pose a high risk of mortality and insufficient care underuse, that the integration of smartphones in studies is easy to implement and leads to a better recording of the patients’ perspectives, and that the cooperation of different medical disciplines in chronic back pain, multimorbidity or pregnancy urgently needs to be improved.

Three trained research partners from the Deutsche Rheuma-Liga were involved in the project from the very beginning. They were joined at the symposium by representatives of rheumatological and GP care practices and the project participants. Together they discussed how the deficits identified in the care of children and adults with rheumatic diseases can be reduced and interface problems lessened in order to better serve the target groups under investigation. Publications from the research network can be found on the TARISMA website.