Breast Cancer Care Mobile App
Breast cancer is the commonest cancer among women and is the 2nd commonest cancer to affect humans globally. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Breast cancer incidence vary greatly worldwide from 19.3 per 100,000 women in Eastern Africa to 89.7 per 100,000 women in Western Europe.
Despite the increasing Breast cancer incidence in the South East Asia, knowledge/awareness on Breast cancer among the Sri Lankan women is poor. Thus, a proportion of Breast cancer patients present at an advanced stage where hopes of survival are low and will have a poor quality of life with limited treatment options. In Sri Lanka, optimum healthcare facilities are not available in every hospital. Thus, patients have to travel to a tertiary care hospital for further management, i.e. ultrasound/mammogram, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Patients come early in the morning, to get a number, for their clinic to either seek medical opinions/multi disciplinary team (MDT) decisions or trace investigation reports; i.e. biopsy reports.
Unfortunately, some of these patients will have to come back on another day as their reports were not available as expected. The time and money these patients spent is ultimately a waste. The situation is made worse as most of these patients are accompanied by a relative wasting their time as well.
Mobile apps developed so far have focused on provision of either, information on Breast cancer, guidance on the histological types or what to do for treatment related side effects.
From left : University of Kelaniya Lecturer in Surgery Dr. Nalinda Munasinghe, Consultant Surgeon Professor Kemal I Deen, University of Kelaniya Head Department of Surgery Professor Ranil Fernando, University of Kelaniya Dean/Faculty of Medicine Professor Nilanthi De Silva, Sri Lanka Telecom and Mobitel Chairman P.G. Kumarasinghe Sirisena, Deputy Director General of Health Services Dr. Sunil De Alwis, ACCIMT Director General, Board of Governors Member Eng. Sanath Panawennage, and Mobitel Senior General Manager Customer Care Jean Fernandez at the launch of the two interactive mobile apps for stoma care and breast cancer care.
As an experienced Consultant Surgeon the former Chairman at Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Modern Technologies (ACCIMT) Consultant Surgeon Professor Kemal Deen came up with this amazing idea to develop two mobile apps for breast cancer and stoma cancer, so the ACCIMT in collaboration with the University of Kelaniya and the national mobile service provider Mobitel is successfully work hard days and nights on this and launched two interactive mobile applications for Breast Cancer Care and Soma Care in October 2017. As the first phase, it will be these two cancer types with the plans to expand further into different cancers according to the need. The necessary medical input, including the medical content and its accuracy, validity and terminology will be provided and supervised by the department of Surgery and University Of Kelaniya and the information Technology center (ITC), University Kelaniya.
The Breast cancer care App provides information on breast cancer (in FAQ’s format) available in Sinhala, English, Tamil languages for the convenience of the patients. These apps enhanced Knowledge and Peace of mind of patients who will be able to reach out to medical practitioners and nurses through this app while taking advantage of the medical information contained it.
The apps are update and revised by the specially trained Admin Nurses and Doctors who are assigned by the respected Hospital, so the patients details are secure and up to date all the time, the schedule functionality of the Breast cancer care app will notify patients when to come to clinics for their next decision or investigation reports. If the clinic date or the place changed that also will notify the patient via the app or sms, this saves time and money of patients and their relatives.
The biggest benefit of these two apps are they provides facilities for cancer patients to be in touch with their Assigned Nurse, the existing normal procedure is each and every patient has a separate nurse assigned to them but patient can’t reach them when ever they need the support from the experienced. But with this facility they could now contact their assigned nurses whenever they want a help, so now they are not alone in this battle against breast cancer or the soma cancer. This moral support is very important in uplifting their spirits and self-confidence to fight cancer.
One of the major problems that patients faced is problems that occurs after a certain surgery, sometimes the small problems will panic patients and will end up being so down and helpless, but with daily status facility that provides by the app helps patients to update how they feel after the surgery each and every day, if something is not happening right with the patient the hospital will notify by the app and they can take actions accordingly, this will help all who feel lonely and helpless.
The blogging facility which is provides opportunity to share patient’s experience (i.e. undergoing investigations, surgery and chemo/radio therapy) with other patients and women. Not only that they now can share their thoughts and experiences with the external audience also, if anyone worries about the data security and the privacy now it is totally secure and this functionally is monitored and revised by the Admins all the time.
And the app provides details of different treatment locations on a Google map so the patients could work their way to the closest location whenever they need medical support.
Eventually, we need to encourage our medical researchers to go dig deep and research about these cancer types and find cures or new medical treatments to overcome these situations, with the help of the medical partners we are developing an online database which will be available soon ,that will uplift the surgical/medical research to the next level.
Breast Cancer Care Logo
As the Both apps are developed on Android mobile platform android users now can download through the Google Play Store without any restrictions(search for breast cancer care on the Google play search option).
General users will have access to all pages , including all medical information, treatment locations and blogs. Access to both apps will be available to users irrespective of their mobile network.
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