MHealth application: Mobile thalassemia patient management application

Abstract

Thalassemia is an inherited blood disorder that requires lifelong disease management and therefore poses a pecuniary challenge in public health management in Malaysia. Constant monitoring of patients throughout their life requires novel adaptation of new technologies to enhance the effectiveness and success of the complex disease treatment regimen. In this paper we present a prototype mobile health (mHealth) application that will assist patients, care workers and medical practitioners in administering thalassemia disease management. The ubiquity and proximity of smartphones as a personal device will allow it to take up an assistive role in the management process. The user requirement analysis revealed that not all of the disease's information is available for stakeholders are suitable for the application and the alert function that works both ways between the patient and doctor is desirable. Operational limitations such as patient confidentiality, minor (underage) patients and analogous legacy registry has to be taken into account. The development of this prototype is the first for thalassemia and the finding of this study will assist future developers embarking on designing blood related disease management applications which share a similar process flow and data requirements.