COPD Foundation Launches App to Help Providers, Patients

The COPD Foundation has launched an app called the COPD Pocket Consultant Guide (PCG), designed to help healthcare providers in the treatment and management of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Links to download the app, either for Android or iOS, can be found here.

The main features of the COPD PCG app are an up-to-date therapy chart, videos offering instructions for inhaler use, screening tests for depression and anxiety, a new pulmonary referral checklist, and links to COPD Foundation resources.

The therapy chart offers information about treatment approaches as they appear in the recent version of the Pocket Consultant Guide. The chart can guide the user through therapeutic options based on data from the patient’s symptom score plus exacerbation history.

Other features of the app include the Fletcher-Peto Impact of Smoking graph — which illustrates how smoking effectively “ages” the lungs — a list of special considerations when reducing treatment from triple to dual therapy, data on oxygen concerns, lung volume reduction practices (LVR), and the importance of CT (computed tomography) screening.

The app also includes assessment scores including the BODE (which predicts survival in COPD patients), the DECAF (which helps predict mortality risk for patients hospitalized with an exacerbation), the PHQ-9 (a depression test), the GAD-7 (an anxiety test), and a mnemonic called HELP OUT that provides suggestions regarding when to consider referring to a pulmonologist.

The app also contains links to PRAXIS (an online resource repository for healthcare providers), the Journal of the COPD Foundation and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute’s COPD National Action Plan.

“Despite the tremendous impact of COPD and the number of excellent available guides, guidelines and strategy documents, evidence suggests that many if not most individuals with COPD are not being optimally treated,” Byron Thomashow, MD, chief medical officer of the COPD Foundation, said in a press release. “The hope of the COPD Foundation is that the new update app could help close and improve some of the gaps in care.”