Patients should have more control over their health

As a patient, your health feels out of your hands, the province of health professionals.

But if patients feel in the dark, they are not alone. Doctors have limited time for face-to-face consultations or tracking the progress of a patient.

This “flying blind” scenario inspired Bruce Hellman to develop health self-management software, with the goal of improving and instilling some extra flexibility into patient-clinician communication.

Hellman is chief executive of London-based uMotif Digital Health, which operates in the rapidly growing market of health-related apps for mobile phones and other personal devices. Once downloaded to a smartphone or tablet, uMotif offers a simple way of logging and tracking daily symptoms of long term conditions such as Parkinson's disease, diabetes and rheumatism.

Doctors have not been holding back on prescribing these apps for their patients, Hellman claims. “It offers better control for patients and almost every clinician is clamouring to use them.”

Doctor dashboard

Using the app, patients can track their feelings by filling out “mood diaries” as often as they like. “A few [entries] a week is probably the minimum,” said Hellman.

The information can be shared with the patient’s physician, who gains a more complete picture of a patient’s illness and course of treatment.

With this level of information, a doctor may be alerted to the need for action well before the patient’s condition deteriorates to the extent that an emergency admission is needed. In this sense, the app can help save hospitals money, noted Hellman.

The app is tailored to specific conditions. For patients diagnosed with Parkinson’s, there is a different list of questions from those offered to diabetics. The app will also alert a patient when it is time to take medicine.

Alongside subjective patient-reported data, the app can generate an all-round health profile, by taking measurements such as number of steps taken, blood pressure, glucose levels and weight. 

For anyone who finds it hard to use a small touch-screen smartphone, there is the option of using a tablet device, or nominating a family member or carer to key in data on their behalf.

uMotif was founded in 2012, with funding from the UK Department of Health’s Small Business Research Initiative, and has partnerships with a number of hospitals in the UK.

Who will see the data?

All this newly-generated data has caused some worries.

Recent UK health data projects, such as care.data, 100K Genomes and the Scottish Informatics Programme, which all involve electronic patient records, have each, in their own way, raised ethical questions surrounding the use of data. The IT firm Symantec reported last year that personal health trackers were vulnerable to hacking.

Hellman said, “Our principle is that people should own their own personal data; it shouldn’t get sold off.”

uMotif isn’t freely accessible to everyone. Patients are invited to use the app by their clinician, who must also provide a unique registration code to provide access.

An app a day

Hellman’s company is jostling for position in an already crowded-market full of health apps, smart watches, wireless wrist monitors and fitness trackers.

Apple's App Store features a dizzying collection dedicated to medical apps, and the National Health Service also offers a library of apps that have been reviewed by medical experts to ensure they are clinically safe.

The game is fast. While more gadgets released onto the market is good news for healthcare providers, how is uMotif keeping up with a pack that includes crowdfunded start-ups and giants like Nike and (soon) Apple?

“We don’t need to build a wristband because there’s about 20 of them out there already,” said Hellman.
In theory, a bigger pool of data can help everybody, he explained. “A patient using a wristband can augment their info by syncing with uMotif records,” Hellman said.