The initial release has below features:
- Stoma care related medical information in three languages English, Sinhala and Tamil
- Real time chat with your care nurse
- Blogging facility to share your experience with others
- Maintain your health record for easy reference
- Get updated with events and meetings
- e-Nurse service to get updated about your status
Stoma Care Application is a platform for communication between medical consultants, stoma nurses and patients, both on an individual and country-wide basis. It is also a platform for patient education and training in stoma care, serves as a billboard for notification of meetings and events and to educate the public about prevention of stomas by screening for large bowel Cancer. Furthermore, data obtained from such an app would provide opportunities for research in medicine and healthcare. Large bowel cancer is the fourth most common cancer as per the National Cancer Registry in Sri Lanka Screening by colonoscopy for large bowel cancer by age 45 years allows for identification and removal of the pre-cancerous polyp, thus totally preventing its occurrence in men and women.
There are four types of application users namely general users, stoma patients, Stoma nurses and consultants. Each user has their own feature and information set to access according to their access level.
General information with related to medical content, treatment locations, products, blog etc. are available to all the users of the system. Patients can specifically Post questions to assigned nurse, Send requests to change nurse, View personal profile including treatment history, assigned nurses. Nurses can Accept/reject patients’ requests, Respond to questions of patients, Follow up on patients, View Patient profiles, view consultant profile of each assigned patients. Consultants can View patient profiles, View profiles of care nurses, View chats between assigned patient and care nurse etc.
The necessary medical input, including the content and its accuracy, validity and terminology will be provided and supervised by the Department of Surgery, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka and the Information Technology Centre (ITC), University of Kelaniya Sri Lanka. The content of the apps is available in Sinhala, English and Tamil languages for the convenience of patients. Through this app it will be possible to educate patients and the general public about cancer, facilitate communication between patients and care-givers and pioneer a new trend in the country’s healthcare system. This app enhance knowledge and peace of mind for patients who will be able to reach out to medical practitioners and nurses through this app while taking advantage of the medical information contained in it.
