Bengisu Tulu*, Healthcare Delivery Institute @ WPI, Worcester, United States Diane Strong, Healthcare Delivery Institute @ WPI, Worcester, United States Emmanuel Agu, Healthcare Delivery Institute @ WPI, Worcester, United States Peder Pedersen, WPI, Worcester, United States Steve (qian) He*, WPI, Worcester, United States Lei Wang*, WPI, Worcester, United States Track: Research Presentation Topic: Mobile & Tablet Health Applications Presentation Type: Rapid-Fire Presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Building: Joseph B. Martin Conference Center at Harvard Medical School Room: Auditorium Date: 2012-09-16 02:00 PM – 02:45 PM Last modified: 2012-09-12

If you are the presenter of this abstract (or if you cite this abstract in a talk or on a poster), please show the QR code in your slide or poster (QR code contains this URL).

Background: Diabetes affects 8.3 percent of the US population and the overall diabetes health care costs were estimated at $174 billion in 2007, which is expected to double by 2034. Chronic wounds are persistent, non-healing wounds, such as diabetic foot ulcers. Such wounds are a significant health issue affecting 5-6 million in the U.S. They are painful, susceptible to infection, and for individuals with type 2 diabetes, can lead to amputation of the affected limb. Costs for treating diabetic foot ulcers are estimated at $15,000 per year per case with an aggregate cost of about $1 billion per year. Daily patient self-care, in collaboration with physician advice and regular clinic appointments, is the standard treatment for diabetes and diabetic foot ulcers, unless complications arise requiring surgery. Diabetes self-care management is complex even without the presence of foot ulcers. It includes activities such as blood glucose monitoring, managing fats, fiber and sweets in daily diet, exercise and wound monitoring. For patients with diabetic foot ulcers, they must also clean and care for their wounds, assess their wound condition, and recognize the presence of any new wounds. These wounds can exist for many months and require diligent care over this time to heal.
Objective: This project is researching and developing a smartphone-based framework for patient-centered care for patients with advanced diabetes. Our project focuses on two key challenges: automatically analyzing wound healing progress of patients with diabetic foot ulcers, and using technology to motivate these patients to take better care of their wounds and their diabetes.
Methods: We are currently conducting focus groups with patients with advanced diabetes to identify how smartphone applications can help them improve self-management of diabetes and wound care as an initial phase of a federally funded study. Two focus groups with 16 patients in total are scheduled for Spring 2012. These focus groups will investigate how patients with advanced diabetes and foot ulcers perceive smartphone technologies as a platform to support diabetes self-management.
Results: The results of focus groups will be presented at the conference. We will also present our flexible mobile app architecture that is built based on our proposed smartphone framework and demonstrate our first version of the mobile app solution designed and developed based on user needs and preferences identified in the focus groups.
Conclusions: Our smartphone framework supports fundamental functionality necessary to support disease self-management such as patient data collection using sensors on the smartphone or external Bluetooth meters and presenting this data to the users in the format they prefer. Beyond this fundamental functionality, our framework analyze patient data, generate reminders and customized feedback based on data analysis, and help patients record the progress of chronic wounds. We believe that this comprehensive approach will be beneficial in helping patients with advance diabetes to manage their condition better and improve health outcomes.