The Mount Sinai-National Jewish Health Respiratory Institute is piloting a new app aimed at providing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients with a mobile interactive "coach" to boost disease self-management and treatment.
The COPD Navigator--developed by researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, COPD experts from the Respiratory Institute and LifeMap Solutions--is the first part of a COPD product platform that features a clinician app and dashboard as well a Bluetooth-enabled smart inhaler.
The Apple HealthKit-compliant iOS software is focused on helping the 24 million Americans diagnosed with COPD, which is the third leading cause of death in the U.S. The app creators, in an announcement, say effective self-management can help slow disease progression and improve quality of life.
"We've worked with the LifeMap team to help them design an app that leverages evidence-based care guidelines, behavioral science, and patient data to deliver personalized information with the purpose of achieving better outcomes at lower costs," Charles Powell, CEO of Mount Sinai-National Jewish Health Respiratory Institute, said in the announcement. "As physicians, our goals throughout product development were to help LifeMap produce a product that integrates easily into a care team's workflow and to maximize benefit to patients."
The new mobile tool and disease management platform arrives as patients and physicians are increasingly embracing new mHealth technology. For instance, a recent study found that 96 percent of responding consumers believe apps will boost quality of life; what's more, 86 percent of physicians who responded to the survey said they view health apps as a viable way of increasing knowledge on patients' conditions.
The COPD Navigator tracks patient data such as symptoms, medication and treatment adherence. It offers educational content from the Institute and provides data to patients in an easy to understand format, using a configurable graph, for identifying patterns in health history, according to the announcement. The data can be shared in real-time with physicians, and helps users avoid potential risk factors by providing real-time alerts on local air quality and extreme weather.
The COPD management platform allows COPD Navigator to gather inhaler usage information from any HealthKit-compliant, Bluetooth-enabled, "smart" inhaler device.
As part of LifeMap's partnership with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the technology player is working with the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology to provide secure, anonymized data for research and developing algorithms for predicting disease exacerbation, identifying effective interventions, and personalizing care plans.
For more information:
- read the announcement
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