New iPhone Clinical Trial App Could Help Doctors Save Lives

[Maura]

A physician or nurse making their rounds usually has to consult a 200-page heavy-duty reference book in order to find out possible side effects that might occur to patients in a clinical trial. How much easier would it be if they simply had to consult an iPhone app instead? A lot easier, you’d be thinking, and you’d be right, which is why The Center for Biomedical Informatics at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia has converted all the reference information contained in the National Cancer Institute’s Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events handbook into a handy iPhone app.

The CTCAE app, which is available free of charge from the iTunes App Store, includes an alphabetized list of symptoms, which enables a care provider or clinical trial researcher to log data into the trial’s records, so that it can be shared with other hospitals and physicians with patients that are involved in the same trial.

Here’s Peter White, Ph.D., director of CBMi at Children’s Hospital, and a leader of the team that created the app:

“This app is one example of mobile health development, in which we are assisting healthcare staff in accessing the next generation of information technologies. Besides the immediate benefits for efficiency, we feel that using this type of technology has significant potential for standardizing care delivery, reducing error, an improving both quality of care and patient safety."

Sounds like a great idea and something that could actually save lives.

Source: The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

 

[zivlan]

wow thats cool!

 

[pdiphone]

This would be very useful. My sister is a nursing student; I should let her know about this new app.