Mobile App PF Health Empowers Patients to Manage Their Disease
A new mobile app called PF Health has been launched to help patients with pulmonary fibrosis track their symptoms and share that information with their healthcare providers.
The PF Health app resulted from collaborative work of the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation (PFF) and monARC Bionetworks, and aims to empower patients to monitor and manage their disease.
The new mobile platform is available for free download to iPhone through the Apple App Store, and for Android at Google Play.
“Our goal is to provide tools that allow every patient, no matter where they live, to fully participate in the entire PF community,” Gregory P. Cosgrove, MD, chief medical officer for the PFF, said in a press release. “PF Health not only eliminates geographic limitations, it also enables patients to lead the effort to transform research.”
Supported by input provided by the pulmonary fibrosis community, the interactive mobile platform also was designed to help patients and their loved ones gain easy access to the latest resources created by the PFF. In addition, it provides an important data collection tool that allows patients to share their clinical information, in a confidential manner, to be used in future research projects.
“Using PF Health helps me keep track of my spirometry tests and allows me to see how my symptoms are trending,” said Glenda Rouland of Birmingham, Alabama, who was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis in 2015.
With the new pulse oxygen feature of the app, she has been able to monitor her oxygen levels. “Having my readings readily available reduces my anxiety when I go to see the doctor because I already know and can easily report how I’m doing,” she said.
The PF Health app also gives patients the possibility to synchronize useful information from other mobile platforms, such as Apple Health and Google Fit, with their clinical symptoms in one single place. This will provide a more general perspective of their health over time, as the data populates as health trends.
Also, using the research sharing feature, the mobile platform activates Patient Research Networks that will support and consolidate clinical and digital PF-related clinical data.
“With PF Health, we have created a more collaborative experience for patients to share their data with their providers to improve their care as well as to share their data with researchers to accelerate the quest for new treatments,” said Komathi Stem, president and CEO of monARC Bionetworks.
For more information about the PF Health app and how to use it, Pulmonary Fibrosis News readers may review the training materials provided by the PFF.
