Cleveland Clinic is collaborating with Ayble Health, a digital health platform focused on chronic gastrointestinal conditions, to support patients in a more holistic way.
In addition to virtual clinical care, Ayble offers brain-gut programs using behavioral therapy techniques, personalized nutrition support and AI-powered wellness tools to track symptom progress. Through the collaboration, participating individuals can go through Ayble's content, co-developed with the Cleveland Clinic, at their own pace and connect with Ayble’s team to help with education or goal setting. Patients will continue to consult their Cleveland Clinic providers as needed. The model is the first of its kind in the GI space, company executives say.
The Cleveland Clinic specializes in serving GI patients, including through its Digestive Disease Institute. It leverages a model known as the medical home, inspired by primary care medical homes. While initially developed for patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), the Cleveland Clinic has since expanded the model to other GI conditions. Enabled by telehealth, it pairs patients with a multispecialty care team focused on psychosocial care, nutrition, wellness, prevention and the mind-body interface.
Still, the Cleveland Clinic was looking for tools to keep patients engaged between visits. Enter Ayble. “We can’t be there every minute of every day … but we want to give them every tool that we can use to optimize the outcome,” Todd Schwarzinger, partner at Cleveland Clinic Ventures, told Fierce Healthcare. “There is this real need to provide these types of solutions to patients to keep them engaged when they’re outside the walls of the Cleveland Clinic.”
According to the National Institutes of Health, 61% of Americans report a GI issue at least once a week. Yet access to specialists is limited. The Health Resources and Services Administration predicts a shortage of more than 1,600 GI docs by 2025. GI psychologists are even more rare, Ayble executives argue.
Ayble Health was founded in 2020 by Sam Jactel, who himself is living with IBD. The company has rapidly expanded its offerings. Today, Ayble employs a full-stack clinical team of physicians, nurse practitioners, dietitians, psychologists and health coaches who offer multidisciplinary digestive care. Once a patient enrolls in Ayble, a personalized care plan is recommended following a virtual visit and questionnaire. The company can treat anyone, anywhere, regardless of whether or not they have a regular GI doctor.
“I had this dream 10 years ago, when I was diagnosed, to be able to have everything I needed to get better under one roof, instead of me having to be the quarterback of care,” Jactel, who is also Ayble’s CEO, told Fierce Healthcare. “This is the way we should be doing care everywhere. We shouldn’t have to put the burden on patients.”
For the past year, Ayble has worked with Stephen Lupe, a GI psychologist and director of behavioral medicine at Cleveland Clinic’s Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, to develop its behavioral health content and care pathways. “There is no one-size-fits-all approach to the treatment of chronic digestive diseases, so we developed a program that can adapt based on an individual’s needs,” Lupe said in a press release.
Ayble and the Cleveland Clinic are working to ensure as much parity between the two companies as possible for patients; the vast majority of patients at the Cleveland Clinic will be able to access Ayble through insurance, per Jactel. “If you get access to this, but you can’t afford it, what’s the point?” he said. The companies are also working to fully integrate in order to simplify data sharing and minimize the interoperability burden for patients.
Ayble has published 14 peer-reviewed studies to date, including a series of randomized controlled trials. Its goal is to keep advancing science and partnering with academia, which can make best practices more personalized and widely accessible: “If you’re living in a rural location, you still have access to that kind of top tier care,” Jactel noted.
“Our hope is that others take inspiration,” Jactel said. “It’s not about competing with the system. It’s about enhancing, extending, augmenting what providers are able to do for their patients.”