Anorexia nervosa is a serious psychosomatic illness that mainly affects children and adolescents. On average, the disease first appears at around 15 to 16 years of age. The usual standard treatment for severely ill patients is an inpatient hospital stay of three to six months or longer. However, young patients often have to wait a long time for a place on a treatment program. In countries such as the USA, the UK and Australia, family-based therapy (FBT) is recognized as a successful, evidence-based outpatient alternative. However, it has never been directly compared with inpatient therapy.

In the project „Family-based telemedical vs. institutional anorexia nervosa therapy“ (FIAT), a total of 100 children and adolescents aged 8 to 17 are being treated telemedically using FBT at 20 study centers across Germany. This group will be compared over a period of twelve months with the control group of 100 children and adolescents who will receive conventional inpatient therapy during the same period. If the outpatient, telemedically supported therapy proves to be just as effective as the established inpatient treatment, both those affected and the healthcare system could benefit: The children and adolescents would not have to leave their familiar surroundings and could continue to go to school and maintain social contacts instead of spending months in a clinic far away. In addition, telemedical therapy could shorten long waiting times for an inpatient therapy place and at the same time reduce costs for the healthcare system.

The research group Data Management and Analysis (DMA) of the Health R&D division of OFFIS will contribute its many years of experience in the data protection-compliant consolidation and processing of study data to the project. It will prepare the data from the 20 study centers and 10 health insurance companies for the evaluation by Universität Bielefeld.