New York's Mount Sinai Health System is teaming up with a California-based mHealth company to launch an Apple HealthKit-compliant platform for COPD patients and populations.
The COPD Navigator app, developed by LifeMap Solutions in a partnership with Mount Sinai's Icahn School of Medicine and National Jewish Health Respiratory Institute, is part of a larger platform that ties together "smart" inhaler technology and a physician-facing dashboard. Officials say the pilot program will test the viability of a care platform that links patients and providers through the iPhone to provide real-time care management.
The project will also send secure, anonymized data to Mount Sinai for ongoing research into COPD and other conditions.
“The analysis of the health outcomes and data captured from mHealth apps and devices informs the development of an expanded disease management platform,” Eric Schadt, PhD, Director of the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology at Mount Sinai, said in a press release. “This platform provides a comprehensive solution for treatment of chronic diseases, including further opportunities for clinician engagement with patients.”
LifeMap, based in San Jose, Calif., appeared on mHealth radar screens just a few weeks ago when its work with Mount Sinai on an asthma study was highlighted as one of the five projects to make use of Apple's new ResearchKit platform. The company is now setting its sights on COPD, which affects an estimated 24 million Americans and is the third leading cause of death in the country.
"Patients can slow the progression of the disease and improve quality of life through effective self-management,” Corey Bridges, the company's CEO, said in the press release. “The promise of the mHealth revolution is to empower patients with self-management tools that are engaging and easy to use. COPD Navigator is the first product in our suite of chronic condition apps, which fulfill that promise.”
The COPD Navigator app is designed to synch with a Bluetooth-enabled inhaler (LifeMap is providing its own device for the pilot) to track medication adherence and identify potential behavioral and environmental triggers of COPD attacks. The app presents the information to the user and also offers real-time alerts about local air quality and extreme weather and educational information.
The data, meanwhile, is transmitted back to a HIPAA-compliant dashboard, enabling clinicians to track each patient's health status as well as oversee a patient population. Clinicians can then identify high-risk patients, set rules for interventions and send reminders and alerts to specific patients or populations.
“We’ve worked with the LifeMap team to help them design an app that leverages
evidence-based care guidelines, behavioral science and patient data to deliver personalized information with the purpose of achieving better outcomes at lower costs,” Charles Powell, MD, CEO of the Mount Sinai-National Jewish Health Respiratory Institute, said in the release. “As physicians, our goal throughout product development was to help LifeMap produce a product that integrates easily into a care team’s workflow and to maximize benefit to patients.”
