from today's paper -- the COPD Co-Pilot in use at Temple Univeristy -- very interesting and helpful -- anyone out there using it?
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02944591
Temple University’s Temple Lung Center in Philadelphia has developed a health application called COPD Co-Pilot. Once daily, patients use a smartphone to report symptoms including breathlessness, cough, wheeze and sore throat on eight easy-to-read screens, and use hand-held meters to measure the air flowing in and out of their lungs. Those who don’t report in by noon get a reminder from the system.
A computer algorithm helps measure how serious the symptoms are compared with the patient’s baseline data; nurses review the scores and refer patients who appear to need immediate treatment to doctors who can prescribe same-day therapy. There are different treatment plans for less urgent scenarios, which nurses can recommend after review with a doctor, and communicate via text or email back to patients who can respond that they will comply or that they may need something else.
A 2015 study in the journal Telemedicine and e-Health found that patients who used the app to report daily symptoms and received same-day treatment experienced fewer and less severe exacerbation symptoms, leading to improved symptom control, lung function and activity status.
“By linking the provider directly to the patient, we can get therapy to them sooner rather than later and prevent things from getting worse,” says Gerard Criner, director of the Temple Lung Center and principal investigator on the study. (The technology used in the study has been adapted by a Temple spinoff company, HGE Health Care Solutions, founded by Dr. Criner.)
Ronny Neal, 58, a Temple COPD patient, has been using the app for about a year. His condition sometimes makes it difficult to walk or breathe and once landed him in the hospital for several days. Mr. Neal was skeptical at first, when his team at Temple suggested the program, wondering, “Are they going to follow me every step I take?”
But he says it has helped motivate him to stay on top of his symptoms much better than in the past, and get attention and medication quickly when they get worse. On the few occasions he forgets to enter his information, he gets a text nudging him to check in. “It’s a tough disease with no cure, but you don’t want it to get any worse and you don’t want to be going in and out of the hospital,” he says. “It’s now part of my routine—get up, brush my teeth, take my medicine and check in.”
Dr. Criner says the program aims to help patients better control their COPD, while staying connected to the Temple Lung Center team on a daily basis.