Marcus Maurer

Background Chronic spontaneous urticaria (CSU) is unpredictable and can severely impair patients' quality of life. Patients with CSU need a convenient, user‐friendly platform to complete patient‐reported outcome measures (PROMs) on their mobile devices. CRUSE ® , the Chronic Urticaria Self Evaluation app, aims to address this unmet need. Methods CRUSE ® was developed by an international steering committee of urticaria specialists. Priorities for the app based on recent findings in CSU were defined to allow patients to track and record their symptoms and medication use over time and send photographs. The CRUSE ® app collects patient data such as age, sex, disease onset, triggers, medication, and CSU characteristics that can be sent securely to physicians, providing real‐time insights. Additionally, CRUSE ® contains PROMs to assess disease activity and control, which are individualised to patient profiles and clinical manifestations. Results CRUSE ® was launched in Germany in March 2022 and is now available for free in 17 countries. It is adapted to the local language and displays a country‐specific list of available urticaria medications. English and Ukrainian versions are available worldwide. From July 2022 to June 2023, 25,710 observations were documented by 2540 users; 72.7% were females, with a mean age of 39.6 years. At baseline, 93.7% and 51.3% of users had wheals and angioedema, respectively. Second‐generation antihistamines were used in 74.0% of days. Conclusions The initial data from CRUSE ® show the wide use and utility of effectively tracking patients' disease activity and control, paving the way for personalised CSU management.

Eight million Ukrainians have taken refuge in the European Union. Many have asthma and/or allergic rhinitis and/or urticaria, and around 100,000 may have a severe disease. Cultural and language barriers are a major obstacle to appropriate management. Two widely available mHealth apps, MASK‐air® (Mobile Airways Sentinel NetworK) for the management of rhinitis and asthma and CRUSE® (Chronic Urticaria Self Evaluation) for patients with chronic spontaneous urticaria, were updated to include Ukrainian versions that make the documented information available to treating physicians in their own language. The Ukrainian patients fill in the questionnaires and daily symptom‐medication scores for asthma, rhinitis (MASK‐air) or urticaria (CRUSE) in Ukrainian. Then, following the GDPR, patients grant their physician access to the app by scanning a QR code displayed on the physician's computer enabling the physician to read the app contents in his/her own language. This service is available freely. It takes less than a minute to show patient data to the physician in the physician's web browser. UCRAID—developed by ARIA (Allergic Rhinitis and its Impact on Asthma) and UCARE (Urticaria Centers of Reference and Excellence)—is under the auspices of the Ukraine Ministry of Health as well as European (European Academy of Allergy and Clinical immunology, EAACI, European Respiratory Society, ERS, European Society of Dermatologic Research, ESDR) and national societies.