Handgrip strength is one of the most useful signals in rheumatoid arthritis care — it flags early disease activity, predicts disability and mortality risk, tracks whether treatment is actually working, and reflects a patient's real functional status. It has just never been standardized.
Hand dominance, grip position, and test timing all shift the result. Without a standardized protocol, one measurement often can't be reliably compared to the next. Synchronize Health's RPM/CCM platform fixes the consistency problem, not just the tracking problem — standardized protocols ensure every measurement is taken the same way, every time, so a change in grip strength reflects a change in the patient, not a change in technique.
Synchronize Health integrates Bluetooth-enabled handgrip dynamometers into its Clinical Status Monitoring platform, transmitting grip strength measurement data to the care team for physician review between office visits. Longitudinal grip strength data supports the treating physician in evaluating musculoskeletal trends as part of their ongoing assessment of medication management and disease status within the established plan of care. The prognostic weight is well established: in the 140,000-patient PURE study, grip strength independently predicted all-cause and cardiovascular mortality (Leong et al., Lancet 2015), and a longitudinal meta-analysis confirms it as a sensitive marker of RA disease activity and functional decline (Espirito Santo et al., BMJ Open Sport Exerc Med 2025).
Not a new test. The first reliable version of one that already mattered.
Physicians get a muscle-function metric they can actually trust and compare over time — turning a simple grip test into a reliable clinical signal.