=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1746/paper-05
|storemode=property
|title=Albanian Mobile Assistant for Chronic Diseases
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1746/paper-05.pdf
|volume=Vol-1746
|authors=Rezarta Kapaj,Arbër Thaçi,Alda Kika
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/rtacsit/KapajTK16
}}
==Albanian Mobile Assistant for Chronic Diseases==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1746/paper-05.pdf
Albanian Mobile Assistant for Chronic Diseases
Rezarta Kapaj Arbër Thaçi Alda Kika
Department of Informatics, Software Developer Department of Informatics,
Faculty of Natural Sciences, APPFORGOOD SRL Faculty of Natural Sciences,
University of Tirana, arberlthaci@gmail.com University of Tirana,
rezarta.kapaj@fshn.edu.al alda.kika@fshn.edu.al
smartphones to monitor chronical diseases and reduce
this way the number of hospitalized patients. Our goal
is to give Albanian smartphone users a solution to
Abstract improve their quality of life by managing their medical
records and medicine timetables. The main problem
The purpose of this paper is to present alMED,
concerning patient drugs treatment is that most of them
a mobile application designed to improve the
forget to take their medicines in the right time or
self –management of chronic diseases by the
dosage, or even confuse treatment of one disease with
patients themselves. Since the number of
another. This causes medication adherence
chronic disease patient is increasing every day
[AAJKL15], which refers to the degree or extent to
worldwide, monitoring and management of
which a patient takes the right medication at the right
chronic diseases is becoming a major concern
time according to a doctor’s prescription.
even for the Albanian Healthcare System. The
Many studies have reported that non-adherence may
current state of alMED provides intelligent,
critically affect the patient, thereby raising medical
user-friendly and secure application to keep
costs [PL12]. Our system gives a solution for this
track of the user medical records. It also works
problem from the combination of sophisticated data
as a reminder for patients’ medicine dosage
analytics and mobile technologies. [SN12]. Using the
and timings for multiple diseases. Patients are
mobile health application the patients will be able to
notified by the application each time they need
manage their health and the professionals will be able
to take a medicine, preventing them from
to deliver the best care possible away from doctors and
forgetting to take them. In the future our goal
hospitals, closer to where patients live work and travel
is to make this application part of a larger
[ECL15]. alMED notifies the patients for the time and
system which includes the interaction between
dosage of the medication they have to take for every
the patients, health care providers and
disease. Except this it also provides a ‘Diary’ interface
pharmaceutical providers.
to keep track of daily measurable health components.
1 Introduction 2 Related Work
The healthcare system all around the world is facing
There are many mobile health applications in use
rising costs with the rising of the number of chronic
around the world, especially in the developed countries
diseases in the population [APG13]. It is a fact that
which provide different types of health assistance to
nowadays people neglect their healthcare because of
their users, being those patients or healthcare providers.
their busy life, responsibilities, every day stress etc.
In this paragraph we will discuss some of the most used
Usage of smartphones has increased rapidly reaching
mobile systems of this type. Some of these new mobile
an approximate number of 2082.7 million users.
applications are specifically targeted to assisting
Mobile technology has become an important part of
individuals in their own health and wellness
everyday life even in the developing counties, and
management. Other mobile applications are targeted to
people are gradually becoming aware of the benefits
healthcare providers as tools to improve and facilitate
gained using mobile biosensor-based application in
the delivery of patient care [FDA15]. According to
improving their health care [SS12]. Mobile health
Research2Guidance there are more then 100 000
promises to improve patient care through early disease
mobile health application offered by IOS and Android.
diagnosis and early disease testing. The cost of
It also values that at least 50% of 3.4 milliard mobile
healthcare system will be reduced by using
users all over the world will download mobile health
applications of some kind by 2018. Further are listed This application is named alMED, where ‘al’ stands for
some of the best mobile application in Android and Albania and ‘MED’ stands for medication and
IOS platforms [S15]. medicals.
1. MyChart allow you to access your medical
records on your phone at any time. You can
quickly see which vaccinations you’ve had and
when at a glance, along with the last time you
visited the doctor and which prescriptions you’re
taking. You can even send a non-urgent message to
your clinic and receive a response within a couple
days, schedule visits from directly within the app,
and request prescription refills. Best of all, you can Figure 1: Application Logo
see all your information online if you can’t access
it due to cellular outages. Overall, this is a medical mobile application that assists
2. CareZone Managing medication can be a chore the users in planning their medical timetables. The
(and confusing). Thankfully, CareZone lets you application is developed in Eclipse using Java for
curate a list of medications, dosages, and schedules Android as programming language, internal (SQLite)
directly from your photo library. The application [SQLITE16] and external libraries (Google Play
also allows you to document and share symptoms Services, MPAndroidCharts and A.C.R.A.).When the
with your family or doctor, while giving you the application launches, the first interface is the ‘Diary’
means to store vital insurance information and interface which contains a list of daily measurable
schedule reminders for upcoming appointments. components.
The personalized health tips and ability to assign
to-do lists and store important documents for
future reference are only a plus.
3. WebMD When people think of WebMD, it’s
probably just to make fun of how it’s often the first
place people go when they need to figure out what
illness or condition they have. The iOS application
offers the same thing, but alongside that, it also
allows people to set medication schedules, create a
process with which they can use to meet a personal
health goal, and check for local physicians and
pharmacies you may not be aware of. And if you
find yourself in need of a first aid advice or
instructions, the application has that too, and it
doesn’t require an internet connection.
After reviewing the features that each one of the above
applications offers we will study the possibilities of Figure 2: ‘Diary’ Interface
integrating and adopting the best of them in our system
considering all the challenges and conditions of the After daily check-up (this check-up is done by the user
Albanian healthcare system and users. itself or according to his doctor’s analysis) the user can
fill each of these components with the right data. Also,
3 Proposed System and the user can access his data for the previous or future
Implementation days from the calendar or from navigation buttons in
the action bar.
The ‘Calendar’ interface of the application gives the
user a brief historical look to his own daily data, which
are saved in the local database. Clicking in a specific
date of the calendar sends the user to ‘Daily’ interface
on that date to display those data in detail.
Another interface (which is also the core of this
application) is the ‘Therapy’ interface, which consists
in a list of all the therapies created by the user.
Figure 4: System Use Case
Google Fit does not offer just the service of the steps
management, but also the other services from the
fitness repository [FIT16]. These services are:
● Heartbeats
● Sleep
Figure 3: ‘Therapy’ Interface
Number of steps is calculated by Google based on
users’ physical activities, like walking or running.
GPS technology included in all Smartphone models
available in the market nowadays, offers the possibility
In the main menu there is also the profile icon, which to obtain a good precision in performance analysis
by clicking on it sends the user to the ‘Profile’ through position and velocity of a motion body using
interface. In this interface the user can see his own
private data like his first name, last name and his photo. Satellite triangulation methods.
In the profile it is also displays the types of diseases alMED takes advantage of this technology in order to
from which the user suffers. The diseases are to be monitor data related to workout session of the patient:
chosen from a default list. The reason of choosing the - Distance/route taken in the workout session
disease from a default list is that its name will be used
by BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) to find other users - Instant and average speed of the session
nearby which suffer from the same disease. alMED can make use of an array of sensors already
Another feature of this application is the contained in modern, such as cameras, microphones,
implementation of Google Fit. GPS receivers, accelerometers, etc.
In our application, beside the number of steps which
are shown in real time, the user can also access his
historical data. The historical data are displayed on two
forms:
● Numerical, which can be accessed from the
diary for the current date or the previous dates
● Graphical, which are overall data shown in Some of the main components of this large architecture
graphical view are:
Patient: is a person with some kind of health
problem.
Clinician: is a healthcare professional who is
treating or helping the Patient with the health
problem, i.e. a nurse, a General Practitioner, or a
specialized physician.
HealthCare Provider (HCP): is the entity that is
utilizing a mobile health Service in the
monitoring, diagnosis and treatment of the
Patient.
Figure 5: Graphical presentation of the number of Mobile Health Service (mHS): is the service that
steps performed during 5 days connects the Patient to the Clinician, and ensures
data measures, transport and protection.
To display the graphical view for the number of steps,
we have implemented an external library named Mobile Health Service provider (mHSP): is the
MPAndroidChart [GITHUB16]. Using its methods and entity providing the mHS through a mobile health
features we can provide to the user a very user friendly Platform (mHP).
graphical view. In our application we have chosen the Mobile Health Platform (mHP): is the IT system
column chart. The graphical view displays the user’s connected to the mobile network to provide all
data since the installation until actual day. To make it necessary functionality.
more interesting, the chart is also animated.
Mobile Health Device (mHD): is a device needed
The application is in Albanian because it is intended for to use the mHS and to connect to the mHP.
the Albanian market, and makes it user-friendly.
Pharmacy: is the drugstore where the patient can
get the prescribed medicine.
4 Future Challenges for an Integrated Another key-feature of this architecture, which also
Albanian Healthcare System represents an innovation in Albania, is the inclusion of
the pharmaceutical providers in this architecture. Here
is a simple use case for this actor as part of the system:
1. A Patient gets a medical prescription from the
A future challenge in the application development
Clinician
process is the inclusion in a cloud-based architecture.
Mobile health application combined with cloud based 2. The mobile Health Service system platform (which
technologies are becoming very handy to physicians consists in centralized databases)
who will be able not only to access patients data, but 2.1 Returns a list of pharmacies matching the
also to combine them with geolocation information request.
about bacteria, pattern of resistance, available drugs,
2.2 Makes this medical prescription available for
etc., all of which is stored in cloud.
the pharmacies to review in case of the
As mentioned in the beginning of this paper, our future patient request.
goal is to make this application part of a larger system
3. A map is available for the patient to view the
which includes several actors like patient, healthcare
nearest pharmacies.
providers and pharmaceutical providers. In this section
we will present some future ideas of the system 4. The patient can make electronic, online or cash
architecture and the roles of each actor in it. payment.
5. The patient goes to the nearest pharmacy to get the promoting healthy behavior. Such reasons include the
prescription medicine. cost of communication and transportation, lack of
**In some cases pharmacies may provide Home scheduling, recording, and appropriate reminders, and
Delivery. poor technology and infrastructure.
Rural areas also usually have fewer health workers and
less infrastructure per person or square kilometer,
reducing the health system‘s ability to provide high-
quality medical products and services.
Mobile technology can aid in providing access to
information, helping to lower costs [KKV14],
facilitating remote care and increasing efficiencies by
Figure 6: Future System Proposed Architecture connecting patients to their providers virtually
anywhere. Using a smartphone application is a novel
approach to improving adherence and patient behavior
Security requirements are also an important aspect [LSPPB13]; it is constantly accessible, involves and
of mobile health system: educates the patient, and provides a repository for
patient- and medication-specific information. Health
1. Device and data security (a) In memory (b) providers of the patients who take complex medication
Processing (c) Transmission regimens may value having the ability to input patients’
2. Confidentiality and integrity of information prescribed regimens and then “pushing” them directly
3. User authentication to patients’ smartphones. Interoperability with existing
4. System availability and access to resources prescription and medical records systems represents a
5. Non repudiation (useful in case of medical vital frontier for future application development. This
prescription) interoperability would shift the current orientation of
For widespread success, the development of m-health adherence applications to a more provider-focused
must move away from small applications toward large- technology and thereby provide pharmacists a
scale platform solutions [ATKEARNY13]. potentially valuable tool to improve medication
adherence.
5 Conclusions
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