The Indiana Hemophilia & Thrombosis Center in Indianapolis has long been a leader in innovative patient care. They teamed up with MicroHealth, a company founded by hemophilia patient Aaron Craig and Dr. Marc Lara to study the use of a mobile app that HTC’s, physicians and patients can use to make monitoring the complex bleeding disorder a bit easier.
Hemophilia News Today reported that, in short, hemophilia A patients who monitored using the app reported bleeding rates 57% lower than patients who did not.
And even more good news: Shire is now working with MicroHealth to develop a specialized app for the very small number of people with hemophilia who develop antibodies to the treatment given to allow necessary clotting to take place. These antibodies are called inhibitors and affect fewer than 7% of patients. MicroHealth and Shire will add new features to the app to make it more useful to those with inhibitors.
Both the original app and the one to-be customized for those with inhibitors, allows patients to selectively share their data with their providers, and provide bleed alerts, reminders, bar code scanning, the ability to create PDFs for data tracking and storing.
The app is available FREE to download worldwide on either Apple or Android devices.
Middle-aged patients with hemophilia have endured lives of pain from such bleeds and the resulting joint damage. The increased use of prophylactic treatment and innovations such as this app, mean a much healthier life for the next generation.
