Merck Oncology has rolled out iChemoDiary, a personal medical diary to let cancer patients record their chemotherapy schedule, treatments, medication and symptoms such as nausea and vomiting.

Powered by ArcTouch and G2 USA, the iChemoDiary application is available for Apple's iPhone and iPod touch in the App Store. Patients can use the iChemoDiary app to track their experience during chemotherapy and communicate with their caregivers, empowering them to take an active role in their medical care.

?Merck?s target demographic is cancer patients and their caregivers,? said Ali Kresge, global communications manager at Merck Oncology, New York. ?Tracking symptoms during chemotherapy is an important step in helping to prevent them.

?Merck Oncology?s strategy was to develop an interactive health diary that could enable a patient or caregiver to record and monitor their chemotherapies, medications and treatment plan, and some of the symptoms they may be experiencing so they can discuss them with their doctor or nurse,? she said.

Merck app helps cancer patients
The iChemoDiary application has both quick-entry and expandable options so no details are lost, and multiple reporting options make it easy for patients to share the information with their doctor or nurse.

Users can create a profile for themselves or another person with current chemotherapies and medications.

Patients can touch a day of the week to record chemotherapy, medications and symptoms. A dot on a calendar day indicates information has been recorded.

Users can also use the application to record the severity of side-effects and other symptoms.

Patients can see charts and reports of their chemotherapy experience on a daily or weekly basis.

Application users can email reports to family and caregivers directly from their iPhone or iPod touch.

ArcTouch was hired to create a best-in-class application that is easy to use for patients and adheres to the quality standards of the pharmaceutical and medical industry, as well as the FDA.

The company implemented technologies such as custom calendar control, custom graphing library for data visualization, core data and SQLite.

As a medical application, the iChemoDiary went through rigorous user testing by G2 USA and legal, privacy and security reviews with Merck.

ArcTouch made sure to strictly follow the user-experience design that G2 provided.

The Diary screen required a calendar, but the iOS development tools do not provide a calendar as a built-in component.

ArcTouch created a custom component for G2 and Merck that looks like the built-in calendar, but is actually better and more functional, since it supports custom colors and icon badging on the individual days, to provide more visual cues to the patient and their caregivers during their chemotherapy treatments.

When Merck initially launched the application, it was not promoted.

?The plan was to see what type of feedback we received and improve the application before getting the word out,? Ms. Kresge said. ?The No. 1 request we heard over and over was the application was good as is, but it would be great if it allowed individuals to include their own notes to track additional information about their day.

?After including the new notes feature, which just launched in January, we plan to promote the application online, through emails, banners and print ads,? she said.