Background:
Symptom management, an important component of MS care, can be achieved by using a patient app tool to manage symptoms and track/store symptom issues to share with clinicians.
Multiple Sclerosis Association of America (MSAA) and @Point of Care collaborated to develop complementary apps for use by patients and their clinicians that facilitate sharing of data: My MS Manager TM, a HIPAA compliant patient app, and Multiple Sclerosis @Point of Care, a clinician app. By enhancing the patient app with validated symptom management tools, patients can track and manage their symptoms and improve their quality of life.
Objectives:
Evaluate the impact of patient app in assessing differences in symptom severity based on clinical phenotype and in empowering patients to track/manage their MS symptoms.
Methods:
MSAA and @Point of Care included validated measures to the app to facilitate tracking of bladder control (Bladder Control Scale; BLCS; 11/2019), depression (Patient Health Questionnaire Score for Depression; PHQ-9; 08/2019), and cognitive function (PROMIS Cognitive Function-Short Form 8a; 03/2019). Patient data were analyzed to assess: 1) symptom severity by phenotype, 2) quality of life (QOL) factors most affected by symptom severity, and 3) benefits of frequent app use (> 28 visits) on symptoms.
Results:
Of 50,196 downloads of the My MS Manager app, 7428 patients have already identified their clinical phenotype and/or tracked their bladder control, depression, and cognitive function: SPMS patients compared to RRMS patients had Significantly greater bladder control issues that alter their activities (37% vs 17%; P = 0.00003), almost lead to accident (40% vs 25%; P=0.005), had accident (36% vs 18%; P=0.0002), and severely affect their lifestyle (16% vs 7%; P = 0.014)
Significantly worse depression symptoms for more than half the days/nearly every day
Reported their depression issues more severely affect their work (>19% difference)
PPMS compared to RRMS/SPMS patients showed no significant differences in bladder dysfunction, depression, and cognitive function
Infrequent RRMS users (? 28 visits) of the My MS Manager app experienced significantly higher depression severity as opposed to frequent RRMS users (>28 visits)
Conclusions:
The My MS Manager patient app facilitates the ability of patients with MS to record their symptoms utilizing validated measures and empowers them to track, manage and discuss their symptoms with their clinicians.
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