ICAL APP
and London to get more feedback and understand how doctors might use it. We found that the doctors and their teams were always on the move around the hospital. This means they often won’t have easy access to a computer when they need to make decisions about their patients. We also found that there are a lot of different people who need to use the guidelines. And they all have slightly different needs. For example, the nurses supporting patients as they are having the scans and tests might use the app in a different way from the doctors interpreting what the scan results mean. So the easier we could make it for different people to access what was relevant to them, without having to spend lots of time referring back to the full guidelines, the better.
WHAT DIFFERENCE WILL IT MAKE? We hope the app gives health professionals all the information they need, where and when they need it. After extensive tests, a group of health professionals from across the country have been using the app in their hospitals over the last month. They’ve kindly given us their feedback, and early signs are positive. “The app makes it much easier to plan nodule follow- up in clinics and MDTs as you don’t have to wait for the website to load and it’s much more phone-screen- friendly,” said one user. “Having the calculator immediately to hand saves me time spent finding a PC and getting through to the risk calculator online or trying to use mobile data to get there,” said another. We hope that many more doctors will now get similar benefits from the app and that it can help make sure the thousands of patients found to have pulmonary nodules each year get the best possible care.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? Since launching in December 2016 the app has already
been downloaded over 1,000 times. We’re going to collect more feedback on the app to understand what features are most valuable to people and any areas we could improve it. Assuming the app continues to be successful, we’ll be working with the British Thoracic Society to develop versions that will work across other mobile operating systems, such as Android and Windows. We hope this app can help us to start to realise the potential for smartphones in supporting doctors and improving patient care. We’ll be keen to learn any lessons that can help us develop more apps to support other areas of cancer patient care. We also hope this app will prove a useful
example of how apps can help improve patient care in general with quick and simple solutions.
Matt Wickenden is a cancer intelligence manager at Cancer Research UK
A version of this article originally appeared on the Cancer Research UK Science blog (access at www.
cancerresearchuk.org)
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