Autor:innen:
S. Wattendorf (Giessen, DE)
E. Alexanidou (Giessen, DE)
S. Cantez (Giessen, DE)
K. Sohrabi (Giessen, DE)
J. de Laffolie (Giessen, DE)
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are an increasing burden in pediatrics. The causes are still unclear, but researchers assume various influencing factors as nutrition, lifestyle and genetic predisposition. [1] Starting from the time of diagnosis, it is of great relevance to offer children and adolescents adequate care to improve their quality of life. In this work, a mobile phone-based solution approach will be presented, whose goal is to provide the children and adolescents with a companion to facilitate their daily life with IBD.
For this purpose, on the one hand a hybrid mobile application (app) using the Model-View-Controller framework Ionic version 5 was implemented. [2, p. 1-22] Its main task is to collect data and display them. On the other hand a webserver, developed with the Ruby on Rails framework, performs the tasks of data collection, analysis, evaluation and storage. At the same time it includes an interface to the CEDATA-GPGE Register.
The app includes several main features. To ensure monitoring of the child's health, there is a diary feature where the user can answer daily questions such as „Wie ging es dir?“ or „Hattest du Einschränkungen in deinem Alltag?“. Furthermore features such as submitting days absent from school or entering lab values are integrated. A nutrition diary and calendar feature help to document meals spread throughout the day and important appointments. In addition, the user can find the public toilets near his location via a WC finder. Besides these main features, the app also includes information about IBD, through which children can inform themselves.
The app offers a simple solution to support children and young people in their daily life with IBD. Both the diary and the nutrition diary allow continuous monitoring of the health status, whereby possible worsening can be seen by the child or the attending physician, if the child's app is connected to the CEDATA-GPGE Registry. Thus, with earlier intervention with a larger and more concise dataset, treatments can be more effective as well as more personalized. In Germany, the app has already been launched via the app stores. A future milestone could be the internationalization of the app, for example to address children from other European countries.
In summary, an executable app for children and adolescents was presented, which is easily available. Especially when the diagnosis of IBD is recent and the challenges that come with the disease are still overwhelming, the app can be a guide not only for the child but also for the parents in dealing with IBD. In the future, it is conceivable that the application will be integrated into existing care concepts of the health care system in order to be able to continuously improve the quality of life of children and adolescents with IBD.