DesferApp Meds & Pill Reminder

DesferApp aims to reinforce compliance with the chelation treatment of a multi-transfused patient. The application supports the long-term therapy of a thalassemic patient in two ways: (a) it reduces the number of omitted medication doses through dose reminders, (b) it enables monitoring of the received medication and the progress of the chelation therapy. The user's personal data are stored locally in his/her smartphone and are not transmitted for any reason to third-parties.

The application is FREE of charge and is supported through advertisements. The user can deactivate the advertisements through a license purchase from Google Play.

Main features

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1. Management of personal chelation treatment information. The application supports three different medication types: (a) deferoxamine, (b) deferiprone and (c) combined deferoxamine/deferiprone medication.

2. Scheduling of dose reminders for each medication type. The user can, either, schedule deferoxamine injections on a monthly basis, deferiprone doses on a weekly basis or a combination of them. Activated reminders show up as smartphone notifications that prompt the user to acknowledge the reception, omission or postponing of a dose.

3. Monitoring of received medication. The application visualizes the history of received deferiprone and deferoxamine doses in a monthly calendar format.

4. Recording of results for medical examinations that are relevant to thalassemia patients. The application supports recording of ferritin and hemoglobin values and their measurement dates. Moreover, it enables recording of liver and cardiac iron deposition index values as they are measured through magnetic resonance imaging methods.

5. Monitoring of ferritin, hemoglobin and iron deposition index values. DesferApp supports the graphical illustration of the evolution of these indexes over time. Moreover, the user can export to Excel file the fluctuation of the values of each index for a specific time period.

6. Backup and restore of application data. The patient can backup application data in the smarphone's local storage and restore them in the same or different device.

Permissions

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The application requires the following permissions:

1. In-app purchases: enables the purchasing of a license for removal of advertisements.

2. Photos/Media/Files: gives the application write access to the internal memory for (i) creation of backup files of user data, and (ii) creation of spreadsheet files with medical examination data (see feature 5).

The application has been tested and evaluated for two years by a volunteer patient which we warmly thank. During the evaluation period, the patient has exhibited a substantially improved compliance to her medication. Moreover, we have received valuable feedback for improving application features and usability.