Interdisciplinary inflammatory disease medicine in Frankfurt: New care model that extends beyond specialty boundaries in university medicine Interdisziplinäre Entzündungsmedizin in Frankfurt: Neues Versorgungsmodell jenseits der Fachgrenzen in der Universitätsmedizin

Immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs) pose a major challenge to modern healthcare systems due to their increasing prevalence, multiorgan manifestations, and the long-term impact they have on patients’ lives. Despite increasing awareness of shared immunological signalling pathways, e.g. IL-23/IL-17 or TNF, clinical care in daily practice remains predominantly organ- and discipline-specific. This often results in delayed diagnoses, unnecessary diagnostic procedures and inconsistent treatment decisions, particularly in cases of complex disease progression. Against this backdrop, Frankfurt University Medical Centre has established an interdisciplinary inflammatory medicine programme, bringing together dermatology, rheumatology and gastroenterology within a shared care model. The programme aims to provide coordinated, systems-based care for patients with inflammatory multiorgan manifestations. Key elements include joint interdisciplinary consultations, consensus-based treatment decisions, standardised longitudinal documentation and the integration of translational research and patient-reported outcomes (PROs). Structured interdisciplinary collaboration enables complex disease courses to be identified earlier, reduces conflicting, guideline-based, individual perspectives and improves the coordination of modern immunotherapies. Additionally, standardised data collection creates a foundation for real-world evidence, quality assurance and personalised precision medicine. The Inflammation Medicine Patients Active in Research (IMPACT) initiative establishes a cross-disease engagement format involving patients as co-researchers in the development of inflammatory medicine.