TORONTO - There has been an explosion of medical-related apps for use on smartphones and other electronic devices. In fact, a recent report by the Healthcare Information Management System Society tabbed the number at about 17,000 and growing.
This week, the Heart and Stroke Foundation launched its 30 Days Mobile App, which gives users a customized risk profile showing the long-term impact of daily lifestyle choices - then guides them to break bad habits to reduce their risk of heart attack and stroke in 30 days or less. The free app for iPhone, iPad and iTouch, available in both English and French, can be downloaded at Apple App Stores or heartandstroke.ca/YourRisk.
Another new app, called Directory for Addiction Treatment in Canada, was just released by Drug Rehab Services, a private addiction referral service. The app lists low-cost and no-cost detox and treatment centres in every province and territory across Canada for people seeking help for alcohol or drug addiction.
It also provides listings of meetings for Alcoholic Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous and Al-Anon across the country, says Marcelo Gemme, who developed the app as an alternative to his website directory.
The app can also put a user in direct contact with a qualified addictions counsellor, either through a toll-free call or text-messaging.
"The whole idea was to be able to build something that people go there, it's user-friendly and they find everything they need," says Gemme, who is located just outside Montreal.
Like a GPS, the mobile app will pinpoint the locations of treatment centres or support meetings within a certain distance set by the user, he says. "Let's say if it's an AA meeting, you're going to have a pin for every AA meeting within 25 kilometres of where you are right now as you do it.
"If you have a guy who has to travel, this is perfect, because he wants to go to a meeting when he has time off, so it doesn't trigger anything."
About 15 to 20 per cent of people seeking help for addictions are now contacting the referral service through a mobile phone, he says.
Watching his four daughters, who "are always on their phones," has convinced Gemme that the use of mobile apps for patients is destined to become an even greater part of health-care management and delivery.
"For me, it's really the future. The mobile, it's where the technology is going to."
Dr. Michael Sabel, an oncologist at the University of Michigan who specializes in the potentially deadly skin cancer melanoma, couldn't agree more.
Sabel and colleagues at the Ann Arbor, Mich., university have developed an app to help patients at high risk for skin cancer keep track of changes in moles and skin lesions to determine if they've become cancerous over time.
The UMSkinCheck app, available free through iTunes for iPhones and iPads, involves inputting 23 photographs of various parts of the body.
"For many, many years we had asked patients to get what's called the total photographic survey, where they had to either go into a dermatologist who offered this or a professional photographer to have some of these baseline images obtained," he says.
"But the reality is these are very difficult things to do - to schedule a time to have a full photographic survey. There are costs involved, it's not always covered by insurance. And even the skin self-exam is kind of difficult for patients.
"We just said to ourselves: 'People are carrying around supercomputers, photography, GPS. Can we use the mobile application technology to help patients in a health-related field?"'
UMSkinCheck gives the user a reminder to take a new set of photos within a set period of time, perhaps every month or two, so they can compare images of skin areas side by side.
"And now you can really say, 'Hey, look this really hasn't changed. I don't need to worry about this.' Or, 'You know what, this has changed. I need to call my dermatologist,"' Sabel says.
The app also includes a skin-cancer risk calculator and photos of the various skin cancers.
Sabel said the team is working on other medical apps, among them one for women being treated for breast cancer.
"My specialty is oncology, but there's probably a large spectrum across health care where these can be beneficial for patients," he says.
Sabel says apps such as UMSkinCheck aren't meant to replace doctors or other health providers. "We were very careful to say this is an app using the technology to ask people to do things that we already think they should be doing."
Cafazzo says apps allow patients to engage in self-care, especially when it comes to chronic conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancers and respiratory conditions such as asthma.
The cost of chronic diseases in Canada is estimated at $80 billion a year in illness and disability - a figure sure to grow as the population ages.
"So if we are going to be responsible, we have to think of ways of dealing with chronic conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure in different ways and give the patients the ability to do self-care, and not increase the burden on the health-care system," he says.
The Canadian Press
19 Sep, 2012
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Source: http://www.globalnews.ca/Canada/heart+and+stroke+foundation+releases+new+medical+app+with+risk+profile/6442718237/story.html
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