Research
Clinical evidence and research
Joyn is our app for patients and rheumatology care teams. DETECTRA is its research version. It has everything Joyn has, plus experimental features such as the Finger Fold Index, and it is only used in clinical studies. Some of our research on DETECTRA has already been published, and it is now being evaluated in multicentre clinical trials.
AutoPiX Clinical Trials
Pix-Monitor Trial
Patients who already have rheumatoid or psoriatic arthritis
Can DETECTRA help inflammatory arthritis patients follow their disease between appointments — flares, treatment response, adherence, and the clinician’s workflow?
Pix-Risk Trial
People at risk of developing inflammatory arthritis
Can DETECTRA help people at risk of inflammatory arthritis reach a diagnosis sooner — through remote monitoring, hand imaging and digital biomarkers?
What is itDETECTRA — the research version of Joyn. It is not a commercial product: an investigational device, used only by research participants.
How it differs from JoynJoyn lets patients track symptoms between appointments and share them with their rheumatologist. DETECTRA keeps all of that and adds the Finger Fold Index (an automatic measurement of finger-joint swelling), two structured Flagging Scores, prioritisation and notifications for the care team, and treatment-response monitoring. None of these are established clinical benefits yet, and DETECTRA neither diagnoses nor recommends treatment.
WhereBoth trials are randomised, multicentre and currently ongoing, at rheumatology centres in Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Denmark. Participation is managed by the Sponsor and the investigation sites; ATREON is the manufacturer of DETECTRA.
ConsortiumBoth investigations are part of AutoPiX, an EU-funded public–private consortium advancing imaging biomarkers in inflammatory arthritis. Visit AutoPiX ↗
Published research
Peer-reviewed papers and congress abstracts behind DETECTRA. Linked titles open the publication.
2026 · Scientific Reports
Clinical investigation of a digital biomarker for joint swelling in inflammatory arthritis based on automated quantification of dorsal finger fold patterns ↗Koller C, Maglione J, Blanchard M, et al. — the clinical evaluation of the Finger Fold Index in rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis and healthy participants.
2025 · Rheumatology Advances in Practice
Single-camera motion capture of finger joint mobility as a digital biomarker for disease activity in rheumatoid arthritis ↗Venerito V, et al. — the MeFISTO work on smartphone measurement of finger mobility, alongside our research on the Finger Fold Index.
2025 · EULAR
Co-design and early evaluation of a remote monitoring mobile app based on self-imaging for patients with inflammatory arthritis: focus group insightsRusso L, et al. — what patients told us about self-imaging and living with remote monitoring.
2025 · EULAR
A user-centred multimodal electronic health record sidecar application to monitor inflammatory arthritis: development and implementation in clinical practiceRusso L, et al. — bringing remote patient information into the rheumatologist’s existing workflow.
2024 · ACR Convergence
Development of a remote patient monitoring system based on a novel digital biomarker for swelling in rheumatoid arthritis ↗Blanchard M, Koller C, Maglione J, Hügle T — how DETECTRA combines longitudinal patient information, hand imaging and a clinical dashboard.
2024 · EULAR
Detection of joint swelling in rheumatoid arthritis through analysis of dorsal finger folds in sequential hand photos: challenges in a real-world settingKoller C — what sequential hand photography looks like outside controlled conditions.
2022 · Digital Biomarkers
Dorsal finger fold recognition by convolutional neural networks for the detection and monitoring of joint swelling in patients with rheumatoid arthritis ↗Hügle T, Caratsch L, Caorsi M, et al. — the foundational paper behind the Finger Fold Index.
Run your next study with DETECTRA
Most of what happens to a patient with inflammatory arthritis happens between visits — and most studies never see it. DETECTRA gives your protocol a way to capture it: structured weekly data and standardised hand images, collected at home, without adding a single visit.
Data between visits
Longitudinal, and standardised across patients and sites.
Objective imaging endpoints
Digital biomarkers from ordinary smartphone photos. No hardware.
Already multicentre
Running in randomised investigations across four countries.
For academic centres, sponsors and industry partners. Tell us what you are investigating and we will tell you whether DETECTRA fits.
