by doctorakerkar

Lupus App

Mobile technology has come a long way & become a part & parcel of our daily life.

Why not have a mobile app that can help you manage your ailment in a better way?

I’m in the process of designing an android app for Lupus.
It would —

1) Help you manage appointments better.

2) Keep a track of your Lupus activity

3) Make a note of questions you want to ask your Rheumie.

4) Store all the important snaps (eg. a rash that you have) for showing it to your Rheumie later.

5) A Lupus ebook.

However, the best Lupus app can only be designed if I know what you want from it.

Kindly post your suggestions ( however silly, weird they may sound) so that they can be incorporated in the app.

12 Comments

      1. Hello Doctor, With my experience with my wife having SLE is that the app should be looking out for having the below mentioned features:

        1. Capture the photo so that the redness / pinkness can be shown.
        2. If we can update the pinkness as well with pointers to point how and what different portion of that pinkness felt (if its of any relevance would be great).
        3. Tracking fever/temperature for multiple days and each day consisting of multiple entries for different hours.
        4. Complete feed of medicine history right from day one of your treatment should be updatable.
        5. Medicinal feed should be properly displayed.
        6. Easy report pull out options like, since how long treatment is going on, how long a particular medicine intake is ON ( that too of particular mg. ), how much more longer supposed to take it as per plan. This will really be of great help when visiting you for appointments. Any graphical view which would help you in your treatment would be good I feel.
        7. Any other symptoms gathering section would help as well.
        8. If the app can alarm during medicine having time, we might not miss even a single dose.
        9. Since these medicines are long term ones, if we can have inventory list as well, so that as soon as we buy medicines we update the app saying how much is there, so accordingly app will alert/remind when the stock is about to get over. Would help to buy in time and again not miss even a single dose.
        10. Blood Test Report History: App to contain names of most of blood tests which are generally conducted during SLE. Also each of the test having the range ( if not atleast updatable ) so that once report is received we can update and keep all records feeded in it. This will give a very good way of comparing the reports based on the previous tests done.
        11. Faqs and preventive updates I think you have already updated in it so guess that is fine.
        12. Pregnency related details should be a separate note in the app with all precautionary terms and associated action for patients to follow.

        If I have any more ideas I shall definitely update you doctor.
        Doctor you have been fabulous with your treatment to all.
        As always please take care of us and always keep smiling.

        — Deevith Rao (Pallavi’s Husband)

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  2. Pictures attaching! And a meds tracker would be great! And, please, it would be very useful if you could see at one sight what meds have you taken and dates! I mean:
    – Prednisone 45mg: from 23 Mar – 30 apr
    – Talidomide: from 1 Jan – 15 Dec and so on
    I never find that in any med tracker and I need it 🙂 I want to get pregnant to keeping a record of meds like that is something I need!
    Thanks! Looking forward to the app

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  4. Dr. Akerkar,

    Creating a “Lupus App” for mobile devices is a good idea! – Your patients will receive such an app favourably, I’m firmly convinced. And for you, Dr. Akerkar, conception, design and in the end marketing of an own app will really be great fun!

    According to what I have learned, especially young patients’ compliance can be considerably raised by a useful and well programmed healthcare app. If it’s also fun, so much the better!

    Your patients may expect a med tracker, as gati_presumida said, and the possibility to record effects of their medications, therapy, and treatment. The option to send pictures to track swelling or rashes would be a winner, I’m sure. A glossary with medical terms all thing lupus will help your patients to learn profound things about lupus (and such a glossary is easy to create). Explanations and comments on commonly used (laboratory) tests will be helpful, too.

    What do you think about a “Lupus Diary”, a kind of pain diary for chronic pain management? In that pain diary your patients can note down how they feel that day, describing subjective disease activity, and they can document intensity, locations, types, triggers … of their disease. Checkboxes would be ideally suited for doing so, I think, and the possibility to attach a short text note. Afterwards, the patients can send this information as a day-to-day or weekly report directly to the treating doctor / the treating rheumatologist.

    When planning a mobile medical app for our company, we had decided to program it for Apple’s iOS, and for the Android OS, but not for the Blackberry operating system (RIM OS). Since its release six month ago (November 2011), the Autoimmunity Guide App has been installed on more that 800 smartphones and tablets.

    800 installations are quite a small number of downloads compared to popular games running on thousands upon thousands mobile devices, or compared to mobile network applications such as mobile Twitter, that’s right. But to promote niche products as we do (my company ORGENTEC Diagnostika develops and distributes diagnostic test systems for serodiagnosis of autoimmune diseases, among them also lupus tests) 800 installations of the Autoimmunity Guide App are fairly good. Anyhow, I am deeply content with that number.

    At present, we are working on the first update of our Autoimmunity Guide. As soon the update is released, I do expect a marked increase of downloads and installations of our app.

    After all, the iOS app (Apple’ iPhone and the iPad) has been installed more often than the Android app. To be exact, three times as much. I think it is because of our customers (b-2-b business) we have made our app for, who are using Apple’s iPhone and the iPad much more often than Android devices. A version for the Blackberry is yet to come, but I think we’ll drop this idea. The adjustment seems to be quite labor-intensive, and I do expect just a marginal benefit, as the number of customers using RIM’s Blackberry seems to be fairly limited in our market.

    Dr. Akerkar, have fun with your “Doctor Akerkar Lupus App”!

    http://autoimmunityblog.wordpress.com/2011/12/07/mobile-health-applications-their-significance-for-medical-education-and-healthcare/

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    1. Thanks Tobias.

      I sincerely appreciate your post & the inputs. ‘Lupus Diary’ & the glossary of medical terms would indeed be a great help to patients.

      Thanks again & I’ll let you as soon as the app is ready.

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  6. Hi, This is Dr Zahid from ZK MediTech Labz, the creator of “The Lupus App”, for Dr Akerkar, the App is in Android Market and crossed 100+ Downloads in just 3 days of Launching, however the App is still under “Beta stage”, there are small bugs,which we are working on it, suggestions are welcome from all users regarding how we can improve the functionality of this app. Go, Grab the app from Android Market, the Link is
    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.svtech.lupus&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5zdnRlY2gubHVwdXMiXQ..

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