The Cleveland Clinic has released a patient-facing iPad app to help users manage epilepsy, a chronic neurological condition characterized by recurrent seizures. The app, called MyEpilepsy, contains both educational materials and tracking tools for patients. According to the CDC, about 2.8 million people in the United States have epilepsy.
The informational features on the app include epilepsy facts and myths, an explanation of how epilepsy is diagnosed, medical and surgical treatment information, first aid information for seizures, and links out to the Cleveland Clinic Epilepsy Center website.
In addition, the app provides the user with disease-tracking tools like a seizure diary, where patients can log the time and characteristic symptoms of epileptic seizures, then display that history in graph form. A questionnaire on the app allows the user to enter information about his or her diagnosis, and returns suggestions for additional treatment options.
The app also has tools built in for managing appointments and medications, including calendars and reminders.
Over the past few years, the Cleveland Clinic has released a number of branded apps, but this is the provider organization's first interactive app focused on a particular disease state.
Epic's MyChart has been available to Cleveland Clinic patients for some time. Last year, the Cleveland Clinic expanded on that offering by launching its own iPad app for patients, called Today. Today includes health and wellness tips, quizzes, and an interactive model of the human body. While anyone can download the app, Cleveland Clinic patients can access its full feature set, including resources to navigate the provider’s network to find a doctor, access contact information, or request an appointment.
About a month later, the hospital system launched an app for connecting cancer patients with clinical trials, this time for both iPhone and iPad. Additionally, the Cleveland Clinic Concussion Center has been using an app for a few years for on-the-scene concussion diagnosis.
