Health IT, MedCity Influencers

3 medical devices for iOS we’d like to see–plus lessons on mHealth app design

There’s a lot of interest in the impact medical peripherals on iOS mobile platforms can […]

There’s a lot of interest in the impact medical peripherals on iOS mobile platforms can have. Used properly, properly designed apps could help catch diseases earlier and make lives of patients easier. As the blogger covering health IT and medical software for Software Advice, I decided to see what it would take to design three apps myself. Through this exercise I learned about the challenges designers in mHealth face that might not be immediately obvious to those of us who’re commenting but lack practical experience. I’ll first discuss the three apps I came up with, before discussing what I learned.
 
Disease Risk Calculator
Since proteins found in blood can be used as biomarkers to diagnose diseases from type 2 diabetes, to cancer, to HIV, using tests that detect specific biomarkers of diseases long before clinical symptoms arise can lead to earlier treatment, saving lives.
 
A user interface, or UI, that indicated to a patient how his score on specific biomarkers had changed over time could help him visualize progress and compare himself to his peers.
 
Spirometer
Studies have found that measuring breathing difficulty before and after taking medicines for emphysema or chronic bronchitis can help people minimize shortness of breath. Often even after a patient has taken a medicine that does increase airflow to the lungs, their shortness of breath continues. But if a patient sees the measurement of her inspiratory flow–her in-breath–before she takes a medicine, the likelihood she’ll actually start breathing easier after she takes the medicine will be increased.
 
Spirometers in patient hands today are cheap, simple devices, so a spirometer attached to a sophisticated app that could record breathing performance over time would be extremely useful for both patients and doctors.
 
Electrocardiogram
Interpreting the electrical activity of the heart over time is useful. It can tell you the rate and regularity of your heartbeats, as well as the size and position of your heart chambers. The presence of heart damage, as well as the impact of drugs or heart rate regulation devices such as pacemakers, can also be detected from an ECG.
 
If used by caregivers this device can help automate recognition of possible problems, rather than relying solely on the human eye to detect potential irregularities. In addition, doctors could take this device to the field.
 
My biggest takeaway from the whole experience of researching how a useful m-health app would work? Technology can do amazing diagnostic feats or make incredibly complex calculations, but solving problems that relate to health often relate to behavior change–a tough nut to crack, for a mere app on an iPhone or iPad.
 
Laura O’Grady, a PhD student in biomedical communications at the University of Toronto, put the complexity in an email this way: “There is a ‘joke’ that is often used by social scientists/clinicians to illustrate this [challenge of knowing how to motivate behavior change]: How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb? One, but the lightbulb has to want to change.”
 
Russel Pryor, the designer who created the drawings of the three apps, and I did try to create a user interface for our apps that would try to encourage change. We tried to think about using the social norms theory principles that have underpinned instances of behavior change success ranging from energy use habits to voting to retirement savings. But we knew we were really just scratching the surface compared to what it would take to design an app that could get folks to change their behavior to be more healthy.
 
O’Grady suggested that if we were to try to take the device to market to develop a proof of concept, that the obviously very important next steps would be to do usability testing and field studies as well as surveys and interviews to assess its viability. So far we’ve enjoyed the project and are learning a ton from the m-health, telehealth, quantified self, and connected care community on the web.

This guest post was written by Katie Matlack, Medical Market Analyst at Software Advice, a company that deals with electronic medical record software. To read the original post please visit the Software Advice blog.


Katie Matlack

Katie Matlack covers medical software and health IT for Software Advice.

This post appears through the MedCity Influencers program. Anyone can publish their perspective on business and innovation in healthcare on MedCity News through MedCity Influencers. Click here to find out how.

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