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Reaching Out to Patients with Mobile Apps:
The “Prostate Pal” and “Bladder Pal” Story
Ronald L. Yap, M.D.
Background• With hundreds of millions of
smartphones and tablets in use worldwide, the “post-PC” revolution is an opportunity to improve doctor/patient communication and improve healthcare
• Mobile apps can be the vehicle by which we can achieve these goals
• This is my story of mobile app development in urology
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Special thanks to Dean LeBaron, the LeBaron Foundation, and the Concord Hospital Trust for supporting this work.
App Functionality
Methods
• Two apps were created to empower patients to track their urologic health – “Prostate Pal” and “Bladder Pal”
• Prostate Pal contains:• Bladder diary• AUA urinary symptom score• PSA tracker
• Bladder Pal contains:• Bladder diary• AUA urinary symptom score
• Data is stored in the device and can be sent via e-mail to healthcare providers
• Programming - Objective C 2.0 with the Apple Software Development Kit. Subsequent port to Android OS
• Developer – 9Magnets, LLC
Development Timeline
Summer 2010 – Conceptualization Fall/Winter 2010 – Apple iOS
Development Winter 2011- Prostate Pal
released for Apple App Store Named “New and Noteworthy”
medical app – Apple App Store Subject of story by Associated
Press Summer 2011 – Prostate Pal 2.0
released for Apple App Store Added e-mail functionality Fixed bugs in 1.0 Added incontinence tracking
Summer 2011 – Bladder Pal released for Apple App Store
Fall/Winter 2011 – Android Development
Winter 2012 – Prostate Pal and Bladder Pal released for Android Market
Impact
Acknowledgements
AUA Symptom Score – a seven item questionnaire to assess and track severity of urinary symptoms
Home screens for Prostate Pal and Bladder Pal
Bladder diary with entry page including leakage and incontinence pad data (left) and
summary page (right)
PSA tracker with table (left) and graph (right) formats
App Visits Visitors Countries
Prostate Pal 1.0
2728 1046 69
Prostate Pal 2.0
3643 1119 60
Bladder Pal 3933 894 46
Total 10304 3059 ------
Conclusions
• Two intuitive, easy to use apps were created on multiple mobile platforms to track urologic health
• The apps have widespread, international interest with over 3000 users from 69 countries.
• Mobile technology in healthcare (mHealth) has the potential to greatly improve the doctor/patient relationship and efficiency of healthcare.
Release through 2/29/2012