JMIR Publications

Background:

Patient journals have been used as valuable resources in clinical studies. However, the full potential value of such journals can be undermined by inefficiencies and ambiguities associated with handwritten patient reports. The increasing number of mobile phones and mobile-based health care approaches presents an opportunity to improve communications from patients to clinicians and clinical researchers through the use of digital patient journals.

Objective:

The objective of this project was to develop a smartphone-based platform that would enable patients to record events and symptoms on the same timeline as clinical data collected by wearable sensors.

Methods:

This platform consists of two major components: a smartphone for patients to record their journals and wireless sensors for clinical data collection. The clinical data and patient records are then exported to a clinical researcher interface, and the data and journal are processed and combined into a single time-series graph for analysis. This paper gives a block diagram of the platform’s principal components and compares its features to those of other methods but does not explicitly discuss the process of design or development of the system.

Results:

As a proof of concept, body temperature data were obtained in a 4-hour span from a 22-year-old male, during which the subject simultaneously recorded relevant activities and events using the iPhone platform. After export to a clinical researcher’s desktop, the digital records and temperature data were processed and fused into a single time-series graph. The events were filtered based on specific keywords to facilitate data analysis.

Conclusions:

We have developed a user-friendly patient journal platform, based on widely available smartphone technology, that gives clinicians and researchers a simple method to track and analyze patient activities and record the activities on a shared timeline with clinical data from wearable devices.