Wellbeing App Released

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where-” said Alice “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

“-so as long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.

“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

-Lewis Carroll, Alice’s adventures in wonderland

Imagine traveling without being able to recall where you have been. In order to know where we are going, we need to know where we are coming from and there is no difference when speaking about our wellbeing. For example, if you call me and ask, “how do to I get to Wellington,NZ?”, I will certainly reply, “where are you coming from?”.  We often have a goal but oddly enough we are blind to our progress (or lack thereof). For instance, ask yourself what your mood was yesterday. Now ask yourself how your mood was two weeks ago. I am certain you are slightly foggy on the last one. But what about your mood 3 months ago? 1 year ago? I imagine you truly don’t have a clue- unless it falls on a memorable day good or bad. Not having access to this information can be problematic when tracking progress and measuring outcome.

In practice I identified a problem with asking “on a scale of 1-10, what is your pain today?” The problem was not the question being asked but rather the frequency at which it was being asked. I do not see my patients daily nor do I want to see them daily, I want my patients to recover quickly and efficiently. But identifying progress can be difficult when it is sporadic and spread out over  several weeks. It’s simply better to know how the patient is coping daily.

Before the wellbeing apps creation I took on the tedious job of emailing clients an outcome based spreadsheet. The spreadsheet was simple and it allowed them to enter an 0-10 rating for pain, mood and sleep, everyday of the week. Once the spreadsheet was returned I would graph the data and use it to demonstrate progress to the patient. I found this very effective in unmasking ineffective treatments, demonstrating the harmless nature of flare ups and empowering self-care.

As my clinic grew this system became overly tedious. However what I found during early graphing was exciting. I found that once patients graphically visualized progress, it reinforced their attitude towards improvement. Often patients will forget where they came from (early pain episodes) but simply reminding them with the graph allows them to understand the progress made.

Because I was graphing data on pain, mood and sleep, patients were able to better understand the correlation. This can be simple to understand but also empowering to envisage. When my patients began to see the graphs and realise they were managing their pain, it was a lightbulb moment for them. They knew what was working and what wasn’t. That to me was empowering my patients. Moreover, it was done through powerful visual feed back.

Visual feedback is an invaluable tool. Whether it is EMG, biofeedback or wellbeing, seeing is believing. The primary goal and vision of wellbeing is this,

“empowering the users perspective in regards to health and wellbeing.”

It is a must for anyone wanting to know and see their progress. Wether it be pain, sleep, mood or your own unique category, you are now able to track it easily.

Finally to put the icing on the cake, you are able to overlay and compare graphs. Overlay strength with motivation or strength with impact on others. What ever you can dream up you can monitor. Wellbeing allows you to simply and easily track your progress on a consistent basis. After all how do you know were you are going if you don’t know where you have been?

Buy Here

Summary

1. Wellbeing allows for graphical mapping of your pain, mood, sleep, and motivation.
2. Input your own category to track (i.e. strength and eating behavior)
3. Wellbeing unmasks ineffective treatments and poor progress.
4. Touch screen monitoring. This is simply just cool.
5. Empowers the user to monitor outcomes daily, not at every doctors visit which could be at weeks apart.
6.  Email your graphs directly to your doctor, trainer, or therapist.
7. It costs less than a pizza and is better for your health.
8. Allows the patient understand that hurt doesn’t equal harm.

Tactile Pain Management: iPhone Application

Over the past few years I have really wanted a way to be more analytical and technological with monitoring my patients outcome assessment. I have tried everything from standard forms and progress reports to mailing out weekly spreadsheets which patients fill in and return. All of these are time-consuming. Ironically enough, often patients lose motivation as well and do not always complete or return forms properly. Through this I began to develop an iPhone application that would allow for reminders and a tactile surface to measure their daily outcomes. I am happy to announce that I used my concept for the first time as a prototype today and am very excited about the potential of the application.

This may serve as a vital tool for simple, cost-effective, and reliable outcome assessment and patient monitoring.  According to the data, outcome assessment should be valid, reliable, responsive to clinical change, and practical.  I believe this application contains these components on a fundamental level.  Most importantly it is practical.  It is simple to administer, requires little input (if any) from the practitioner.  Moreover, it allows for yes/no or quantitative type responses for the user.  Therefore, this application is time and cost efficient as well as valid, reliable, and responsive.

please note these screenshots are from the prototype and are being sharpened up at the moment.

The application will allow the patient/client to monitor the following areas on a daily basis:

1. Pain and Soreness
2. Energy Levels
3. Quality of Sleep
4. Motivation
5. Impact on Others
6. Willingness to Change
7. Productivity
8. Custom Field (Add in anything you would like here; i.e. Job Satisfaction)

The custom field also allows the individual to place a baseline on the lowest and highest values.  For instance, if we use Job Satisfaction as an example, the lowest value may be labeled as “I Hate My Job” and the highest being “I Cant Believe I Get Paid to do This!”.  It will give freedom over the labels allowing the patient to connect better with their questionnaire.

The application then stores the info and begins to chart the data over time.  This is important for a few reasons:

1. It allows the patient to “SEE” their progress.  Any healthcare practitioner can appreciate the impact this has in demonstrating pain trends.
2. It allows the patient to recall and reflect on their treatment over large periods of time in a matter of seconds.
3. It allows the patient to understand flare ups and how even though they may be having a flare up, their overall trend is improving
4. It allows the patient to monitor their own progress and give a sense of accountability

The graphical input will allow the user and practitioner to see the patients progress over the course of:

1. One Week
2. 6 Months
3. 12 Months
4. Year to Date (YTD)

Furthermore, the user is able to enter in reminders so that the alarm on the phone goes off or vibrates during the day to prompt them to do one or more of the following:

1. Record their Levels
2. Do their exercises/stretches
3. Custom Field (Add in anything you would like here)

Because it is important for the patient to have great and effective communication with their personal practitioner(s) I have included a function that allows them to email the charts and data (on the spot) to their practitioner(s).  I am really excited about this because it puts the accountability in the patients hands and empowers them to understand their pain and talk about their pain in a direct and easy manner.

It will also allow the patient to upload their outcomes to Facebook as a way of showing off their improvement (or perhaps lack of).

The update pathway includes:

1. Secure data (no patient names for security) upload to a server for pain management research
2. Children’s version for child cancer patients
3. Graphical Comparison (look at perhaps pain vs mood)
4. Advanced Statistical Analysis
5. Various Graphical Forms

This application will also be able to be branded to your clinic through our brand-the-app affiliate program.  This will allow your clinic to place all branding and information on the app (such as splash screen, about, and contacts) for sales to your patients.  You will also retain royalties from the sales of the app on iTunes or other supplying stores.

In summary, I am VERY excited about the potential of this application as there is hardly anything of its kind currently available.  Its simple, easy to use, and any patient that has an iPhone will love it.  Plus, it makes something that was bland and boring, actually fun.  The potential for research using this application is also very exciting.  This form of outcome measurement is essential in enhancing doctor-patient communication and improving goal setting and decision-making abilities.  Consider this when thinking of this application:

1. Establishes quicker more reliable report with the doctor and patient
2. Unmasks Ineffective Treatments believed to be Effective
3. Improves Goal Setting and Goal Achieving (are we making our goals?)
4. Improves Decision Making
5. Reduces the “burden” of typical paperwork and progress reports
6. Highly responsive
7. Helps justify treatment outcomes to 3rd party providers

I expect this to be available in the iTunes store by the second week of October and for a very affordable price (especially when compared to the cost of a patients office visit).  I hope you share my joy in this application.

If you have any questions feel free to contact me via comments below or through my website: www.anthonyclose.com