COPD Navigator app in pilot with Mount Sinai Hospital (NYC)

An app to help make life easier for a reported 24 million COPD patients in the US has been developed jointly by Mount Sinai Hospital, the affiliated National Jewish Health Respiratory Institute in New York and LifeMap Solutions. The COPD Navigator app encourages patient self-management through visualizing patient data and patterns, including symptoms, medication, treatment adherence, and quality of life, coupled with alerts about local air quality and weather which can dramatically influence risk. Patient data is transmitted to their physician, with an emphasis on fitting into office workflows. LifeMap is also tracking when the patient uses an inhaler through their self-designed Bluetooth LE device, though it uses any Apple HealthKit enabled inhaler. (The app is apparently HealthKit based–no confirmation whether an iPhone is provided for the pilot.) According to MedCityNews the next part of the product design will focus on the clinician-facing dashboard. It will come as a surprise that COPD is the third cause of death in the US, but no surprise that it is largely preventable as an outcome of smoking, with the secondary cause environmental or job site pollution. Propeller Health mines a similar space in both COPD and asthma, last seen at NYeC Digital Health Conference. Hat tip to Mike Clark via Twitter (@clarkmike)