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Healthcare IT

Smart phones for smart healthcare

By Serene Leow | 10 August 2010

A group of researchers from Saint Louis University and Old Dominion University have been studying how smart phones can help elderly diabetics in China manage their health. Dr Maggie Jiao Ma (pictured), Assistant Professor of the Department of Aviation Science at Saint Louis University, gave FutureGov a progress report.

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“The project proposed to design and prototype an age and culturally appropriate, interactive diabetes self-management support system for elderly diabetics in China,” said Dr Jiao Ma. The software, referred to as the Chinese Aged Diabetic Assistant (CADA), was prototyped using a user-centered design (UCD) approach, one that focuses on the needs, desires and limitations of end users, she said. The project targets patients aged 60 to 80 years old. Their providers (physicians and nurses) and caregivers (spouses, children and siblings) are secondary users.

China is one of the countries in the world with the highest number of diabetics. In 2009, there were 43.2 million recorded cases of diabetes. This number is expected to increase to 62.6 million in 2030. The proportion of undiagnosed diabetes is higher in the poorer rural areas (70.5 per cent rural compared to 58 per cent urban), indicative of the lack of public awareness of diabetes and shortage of rural medical facilities. Sixty-two per cent of Chinese still live in rural areas.

This is where the CADA comes in. “Potential positive effects of the CADA intervention include an expanded knowledge of the disease, better compliance with recommended care and increased awareness of the social support networks available to the patient,” said Dr Jiao Ma.

The CADA has four main features, one of which allows users to record daily symptoms their doctors should know about. Other features include a food pagoda which allows users to track their daily food intake and a trivia game which tests the user’s knowledge of diabetes. These features are useful for patients living in rural areas and who may not have the luxury of meeting their doctors often.

Some patients, however, have trouble embracing or learning to use this new technology, said Dr Jiao Ma. People from rural and county areas are one such group – due to low education, tech illiteracy and financial constraints. Many of these patients also have the mentality that they are “too old to learn anything”, she said.

In response, the research team hopes to make this smart phone technology more family oriented. “Our participants depend on their family a lot of the time, like on their grandkids to learn to use cell phones and other technologies, for example,” Dr Jiao Ma said. One way to involve the patients’ families is to come up with a way to connect smart phones to the television set.

“It’s easier for the eyes and patients can track their progress and play games with their family and friends. Connecting smart phones to the TV can also be a useful educational tool for medical providers and diabetes educators in rural and county areas. Tech savvy users in cities want to have a PC/web version, which we have included in our research road map,” said Dr Jiao Ma.