LifeMap Solutions Releases COPD Management App

San Jose, Calif.-based LifeMap Solutions Inc., a digital-health subsidiary of BioTime Inc. known for its Researchkit-enabled app Asthma Health, today announced that its Healthkit-compliant iOS app, COPD Navigator, is now available for free download from the App Store. Researchkit is a software tool offered by Apple Inc. for app development, and Healthkit is Apple’s tool that allows health apps to funnel their information into one centralized location on a user’s device.

Developed in close partnership with researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, N.Y., and pulmonologists from the Mount Sinai—National Jewish Health Respiratory Institute, the app empowers patients diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) to better monitor and manage their condition. An enhanced version branded as Supercare iBreathe will be clinically deployed by SuperCare Health, a chronic care management company specializing in respiratory diseases. The iBreathe app is customized with unique data collection points and allows SuperCare Health’s clinical care team to track them in real time and respond immediately to COPD patients enrolled in their Healthcare at Home program. This marks the first commercial revenue by LifeMap Solutions. Financial details were not disclosed.

“LifeMap Solutions is dedicated to building mobile health (or mHealth) apps that positively, powerfully affect patients’ quality of life,” said Corey Bridges, CEO of LifeMap Solutions. “We’ve built our first two apps to help sufferers of asthma and COPD, and we’re working to expand our impact across a wider range of chronic conditions. With COPD Navigator, we’re aiming not only to empower patients to manage their own health more easily, but also to engage more deeply with their care providers. We believe that the key to this is COPD Navigator’s summary screens for patients’ health data. Just as happened with the Doctor Dashboard feature in our Asthma Health app, patients will show COPD Navigator to their doctors and initiate data-driven conversations. And through our partner SuperCare Health, we’re gratified to deploy our technology directly into a patient-care setting.”

The app leverages evidence-based care guidelines, behavioral science, and patient data to improve patient adherence with the goal of achieving better health outcomes at lower cost. COPD Navigator users receive real-time local weather and air quality alerts, medication reminders, and tools to track their symptoms in order to more quickly recognize COPD exacerbations, in which their lung condition suddenly worsens. The app is also lets patients share this information with their healthcare teams. This gives patients the flexibility to address exacerbations at home under their doctor’s guidance and potentially prevent an expensive medical emergency.

“Ongoing guidance and insight from care teams amplify the benefits gained from using self-management tools, which is why an effective mHealth solution has to cater to both patients and care teams to maximize value,” said Charles Powell, M.D., CEO of Mount Sinai—National Jewish Health Respiratory Institute. “With COPD Navigator, patients can easily share their self-reported health information with care teams to address exacerbations in their conditions at home under proper guidance, potentially preventing expensive emergency room visits or inpatient hospital stays.”

COPD is one of the nation’s most serious health problems, affecting over 24 million Americans. The condition created direct and indirect costs of nearly $50 billion in 2010, according to the American College of Chest Physicians. To help improve outcomes at lower costs, LifeMap Solutions is partnering with paying commercial entities to deploy COPD Navigator to patients in clinical settings.

SuperCare Health Clinical Deployment

SuperCare Health will deploy COPD Navigator as SuperCare iBreathe to COPD patients enrolled in their Healthcare at Home Program in December 2015, enabling them to remotely monitor their patients through a unique set of health indicators.

This health data is integrated into SuperCare Health’s Electronic Health Records System (EHR), where the company’s care managers can then analyze the data with their proprietary care algorithm to reduce 30-day hospital readmissions, improve patient adherence to treatment, and educate about better disease management.

“SuperCare Health has demonstrated that a high-touch and high-tech, unique approach to chronic care management truly helps COPD patients avoid hospital visits through better management of their condition,” said John Cassar, CEO of SuperCare Health. “Our collaboration with LifeMap Solutions has empowered us to deliver the enhanced iBreathe app, the perfect mHealth complement to our COPD management programs.”

SuperCare iBreathe is the first production commercial deployment of the enterprise version of COPD Navigator. This enterprise version plugs the COPD Navigator app into a larger technology platform that facilitates deeper monitoring and analysis of patient information by clinicians.