Europe's first barcode smartphone safety system for patients with haemophilia has now reached the one hundred user mark. The mpro system, designed by Crimson Tide for NCHCD, enables patients to self-HeatherMcLeanister at home in order to check whether their medication is safe to use. Each patient is issued with a smartphone that has the mpro application installed on to it. By scanning their vial of medication that is labelled with a unique barcode, the mpro application checks that the medication matches the patient's prescription as well as whether it is in date. The application then prompts the user to enter the reason for the HeatherMcLeanistration and other details that add to the patient's medical history.
Once information has been entered on the device, the smartphone automatically communicates with a secure database where the data is stored and is made readily accessible for healthcare professionals in real time. If any patient records a clinically significant bleed, the clinician is alerted immediately via an email or text.
The system can also check to see whether the prescription is on a recall list and patients are given access to a secure web portal where they can view and print their own treatment history. Additionally, in the event of little or no mobile signal coverage, all data is saved securely to the patient's smartphone until coverage is restored, where it is subsequently pushed back out to the NCHCD database and stored.
Said Crimson Tide executive chairman,Barrie Whipp: 'With an estimated 6,000 haemophilia patients solely in the UK, there is obviously great potential for our system, both in this country and worldwide. Although developed to ensure safety for home treatment haemophilia patients, it is attracting considerable interest in other market places both within haemophilia and for other chronic disease groups that require medication at home.'
The requirement for such a system stems from a global scale medical catastrophe in the 1980s where blood products used by haemophiliacs became contaminated with HIV and Hepatitis C. The National Centre for Hereditary Coagulation Disorders (NCHCD) decided to implement a system that would remove the possibility of a similar disaster arising in the future.
'We're delighted to have reached this milestone. The mpro smartphone application has advanced significantly since it was implemented a couple of years ago and it has provided patients with a number of safety features that ensures that maximum levels of safety and accuracy on medication track and trace are always met,' added Feargal McGroarty, NCHCD project manager.
