The ability to track concussion symptoms, to get vital information on dosage needs in emergencies, and to receive transgender health consultations through the use of mobile apps will soon be a reality.
Those three app ideas, conceptualized by Medical College of Wisconsin teams, were the winners of the second annual Mobile App Challenge recently hosted by MCW.
A total of 52 mobile apps were proposed in this year’s challenge, and nine finalists presented their pitches to a panel of judges from the Medical College, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Creative Alliance Milwaukee, and Startup Milwaukee.
The three winners were Symptom Tracking Assessment of Concussion; Transgender Health Consult for the Health Care Provider; and The First 5 Minutes: Key info on dosage needs for children during a resuscitation emergency.
The teams behind the creative ideas will collaborate with students at the UWM App Brewery to develop the apps.
The Symptom Tracking Assessment of Concussion app is designed for people who have been diagnosed with concussions to rate their symptoms, according to Adam Pfaller, a clinical research assistant in the brain injury research lab and the lead person on the app.
Concussions have 22 symptoms, including headaches, neck pain and dizziness, and the patients rate them daily on a zero to six scale. Zero means the patient does not have the symptom; one to two represents the mild range; three to four the moderate range; and five to six the severe range.
Then patients email the ratings to their providers through the app before their appointments to show how their symptom recovery is progressing in the days and weeks following the concussion.
“(The app) will help appointments run smoother and allow for an objective recall of how the patient was feeling,” Pfaller said. “If they have a doctor’s appointment two weeks out after concussion, and they are asked how they were feeling in the days after the injury, that can be difficult to recall and somewhat unreliable.”
While other similar apps exist, Pfaller said they only allow for a “yes” or “no” response, rather than a rating.
Another winning app, Transgender Health Consult for the Health Care Provider, aims to serve as a quick, user-friendly, point-of-care primer for health care providers who encounter transgender patients.
“About a third of U.S. medical schools conduct formal training in transgender health, and those who do graduate from those programs still have significant misconceptions about transgender individuals,” said Mike Widlansky, the lead person on the app and an associate professor in the department of medicine, division of cardiovascular medicine. “There’s a large knowledge gap with health care issues specifically to transgender patients, and this app is designed to help address that gap.”
The app will include such information as terminology, specific medical history elements, and various diagnostic elements. It will also explain how to create a transgender-friendly office, mention the unique medical history components a doctor should ask a patient, and provide some medical therapies an individual may be undergoing.
Widlansky said no other apps currently exist on the topic. Information is available on reference sites, but he said those are more difficult to navigate in a busy clinic than an app.
Lastly, “The First 5 Minutes: Key info on dosage needs for children during a resuscitation emergency” app will allow health care providers to determine the appropriate dosage and size of resuscitation equipment to use by simply entering a child’s age or weight.
The Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin has dosage and equipment size information based on weight in a hand-held guidebook and on code cards, according to Amy Drendel, associate professor of pediatric emergency medicine and the lead person on the app.
“The app provides a technologic solution to having these ‘paper’ items in the health care provider’s pocket, and we contend provides more data to them in an efficient manner,” Drendel said.
Her team’s app is different from others on the market because it is a “one-click solution.” She said other apps require a series of clicks answering multiple “irrelevant” questions, which makes it difficult to use during a critical time when adrenaline is high.
