Dying of a brain tumor, Frederik van den Broek had one last wish on his “bucket list”: serving as his own guinea pig to build a smartphone app for fellow cancer patients.
Now Dutch neurologists say the input from Van den Broek, who died late last month aged 41, has been invaluable in creating what is believed will be the world’s most advanced mobile-based app for cancer patients.
MindApp for Android and iPhone mobiles will allow users with a few simple clicks to track and update appointments, such as for radio and chemo therapy, to help remember who their doctors are and even to manage the myriad pills they must take.
Photo: AFP
It will also allow patients to input data — such as when they have had an epileptic seizure — and “talk” to doctors about their condition without having to come into hospital.
Van den Broek said a few days before his death that his idea for a specialized “brain cancer app” was “born out of pure frustration.”
“The hospital gave me a printout of appointments, which medicines to take, and when, as well as a diagnosis of how long I had to live,” Van den Broek said in an e-mailed interview, his last.
Photo: AFP
“I lost the printout within an hour. These things happen when you’ve lost a large part of your brain and your short-term memory has gone to pieces,” he said.
Van den Broek was intensively involved in the app’s development, with himself as the guinea pig: deciding the features it should have and even the colors to be used to give patients maximum ease of use.
“Brain tumor patients often suffer from loss of cognitive abilities, for instance memory loss and changes in behavior,” said Jaap Reijneveld, a neurologist at Amsterdam’s Free University Medical Centre (VUMC), who is helping with the app’s development.
“This app will be of huge support to patients, particularly those suffering from glioblastoma, a type of brain cancer that’s often highly malignant,” Reijneveld of the VUMC’s brain tumor center said.
“Patients have a massively complicated treatment schedule, and the app, the most advanced to date, will help them remember things, but more importantly, give constant feedback to us as doctors on the patient’s condition,” he said.
The app complements a growing worldwide trend in which new digital technology allows patients to manage their diseases from home, easing the burden on overstretched healthcare facilities.
Easy to set up, MindApp has four sections that can be accessed by a simple touch on a smartphone screen. An appointment calendar is updated automatically once confirmed with the hospital; second, an alarm reminds the patient to take his or her medicines and is turned off once a pill has been taken.
Third, the app features a daily logbook in which patients can make notes of their condition and record episodes, such as epileptic seizures. The information is updated in the patient’s file which doctors are able to access.
The fourth section provides feedback from doctors based on logbook input, for instance instructions to increase or lower the dosage of medications.
Vincent van Dijk, who collaborated with the terminally ill Van den Broek on MindApp’s design until the day he died, said he hoped the first version would be available from “app stores” within the next three months.
Van Dijk said the project is financed through crowd funding and about about 70,000 euros (US$80,000) was needed to finalize MindApp’s development.
Donations so far have totaled about 60,000 euros, and IT giant Microsoft has also offered to help with development, Van Dijk said.
Sadly for Van den Broek, it is too late to benefit from the fruit of his labors.
“It’s a pity I won’t be able to use the app, but it gives me the feeling that at least my illness wasn’t for nothing,” he said.
“Some people go on a world cruise or make a ‘bucket list’ when they hear they’re going to die,” he said. “The MindApp is my bucket list.”
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by