BETTER-TMD

Biology and Evidence for Translational Therapeutics in Real-world TMD (BETTER-TMD)

In September 2025, C-TMD IMPACT was funded to carry out the research project titled Broader Evaluation of TMD Treatment Efficacy and Response (BETTER-TMD). The overall goal of this project is to define and predict which existing treatments are likely to be most effective for specific patients from a whole-person perspective, considering their symptoms and psychosocial context. The study leverages a custom-developed app, MyDocNote, to collect real-world, structured, patient-reported treatment outcome data. These outcomes will be paired with de-identified, highly structured data on signs, symptoms, and diagnosis. Since its initial conception, the study has since been modified to include a deep phenotyping component to complement patient-reported treatment outcome data and is now titled Biology and Evident for Translation Therapeutics in Real-world TMD.  

  • Objective 1

    Establish a set of common data elements (CDEs) to characterize the phenotypic traits and treatment outcomes of TMD-OFP patients.

  • Objective 2

    Collect a large longitudinal, structured dataset of patient treatment outcomes using our mobile app, MyDocNote.

  • Objective 3

    Analyze patient data to improve diagnosis and treatment decision-making for TMD-OFP.

  • Objective 4

    Investigate potential biomarkers that distinguish patients with TMD-related pain from non-pain controls and evaluate associations between candidate biomarkers and treatment outcomes.

Achievement of these objectives will deliver: 1) a large-scale, longitudinal, structured, and whole-person database of TMD-OFP signs, symptoms, and treatment outcomes and 2) decision-making algorithms for diagnosis and treatment based on data analyses including ML methodology. Ultimately, these can form the basis of a real-time point-of-care system to support clinicians in diagnosing TMDs and planning treatment.

©  2026 C-TMD IMPACT. Built using WordPress and the Mesmerize Theme