Elizabeth Morrison-Banks, MD, a health sciences clinical professor at UC Riverside School of Medicine, is investigating whether home-based telemedicine can be used to treat multiple sclerosis.
The one-year pilot project, funded by a $100,000 grant from Genentech, will assign adults with multiple sclerosis to either traditional in-person care, in which a patient attends office visits with a neuro-immunologist, or telemedicine care. For the telemedicine group, a nurse practitioner will visit the patient at their home to review medical history and perform a neurological examination in collaboration with an off-site UC Riverside neuro-immunologist.
Dr. Morrison-Banks and her research team will compare the two groups on a number of variables such as quality of life, pain levels, fatigue, visual impairment and mental health.