The art of creating impactful apps
HEART failure accounts for one in 10 acute medical admissions in Malaysian hospitals. It is one of the most common reasons for hospital readmission cases. The problem lies in the fact that most heart failure patients are unable to recognise early warning symptoms of worsening heart condition, mainly if the symptoms are atypical.
This is due to several reasons – limited communication with healthcare providers, lack of correct information, memory difficulty, complex medical regimen and a lack of compelling symptoms.
Heart failure patients in rural areas are also unable to access hospital-based services easily due to their remote location.
To enable the early prediction of worsening heart failure, Monash University Malaysia collaborated with several Health Ministry hospitals to develop ReportCare, a heart failure patient management app for heart failure patients with implantable devices.
The app will be able to capture real-time data trends, analyse and communicate it directly to cardiac care clinics on time.
Users can access ReportCare without a mobile Internet connection. It allows patients, especially from rural areas, to report their health conditions using a virtual assistant and be alerted of early worsening status.
This feature also enables immediate intervention to take place remotely – before their next scheduled visit or to have a remote monitoring system installed in their homes.
Using technology to address gaps in healthcare
Digital health innovations like ReportCare are an example of how software engineering helps improve a person’s quality of life.
“In the future, software engineering will become more vital in the education and healthcare sectors.
“People have been talking about teleconsultation for many years but are only taking it seriously now because of the pandemic. The same goes for online learning.
“We will see a greater presence of software engineering in the market,” says Monash University Malaysia School of Information Technology lecturer Dr Nik Nailah Abdullah ( pic).
She added that Malaysia has tremendous untapped potential for healthcare technology as the market is still nascent compared to developed markets such as Singapore and Australia.
ReportCare is one of the four apps being developed under the Software Engineering Industry Experience Studio Project, a new unit offered in the Bachelor of Software Engineering (Honours) programme.
Currently in its first year, the digital health projects are in line with Monash University’s “Network for Equity through Digital Health” (NEED) interdisciplinary initiative.
NEED aims to enhance access to high-quality healthcare and wellbeing in underserved communities through critical digital health research.
Monash University Malaysia president and pro vice-chancellor Prof Andrew Walker and Monash University Faculty of Information Technology Professor of Practice in Digital Health Prof Chris Bain are the co-founders of NEED.
Chemocare aims to help cancer patients with monitoring and reporting their chemotherapy side-effects so that they know when to see a clinician.
Students routinely communicated with an oncologist from a private hospital, who acted as an independent adviser and also interacted with cancer patients from public hospitals, as they worked on developing the app to ensure that the user interface would be relevant to their needs.
They also worked together with researchers from the Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences and the Malaysian Federation of the Deaf to create a mobile app, Deaf In Touch Everywhere (DITE).
DITE provides deaf individuals with access to a sign language interpreter by appointment or on-demand and have their health consultation translated via video conferencing.
Meanwhile, the TakeMe app connects older people who have low to moderate cognitive frailty with volunteers who can help transport them, thus improving their mobility.
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