Patient designs mobile app to help with breast cancer treatment

Karen Bonham, a patient with breast cancer, was very anxious before the start of radiotherapy. The treatment requires patients to raise their arm above their head, but often they find that task difficult or painful after breast surgery.

Although exercises are vital to being able to access radiotherapy, Karen Bonham felt that the leaflets giving details did not help her enough and confided this information to her physiotherapist. To her delight, the full breast care team, including the surgeon, gathered to produce something more easily accessible to everybody.

The ‘Breast Axilla Postoperative Support app’ was then launched in February 2019. Essentially, the app provides information on post-operative exercises currently available. It enables patients to visually see how to do the exercises and gives them an idea of how they are doing and progressing with self-checks. Additionally, the app sets up reminders to assure that patients do the exercises, but also suggests contacting physicians in case things aren’t progressing as they should, to avoid delays in treatments due to restricted movement.

Karen Bonham was very proud to see that as a patient she was able to produce something so beneficial to others in her situation and believes the app not only provides information, but also encourages self-management, decreases anxiety, and helps boost the confidence of patients.

The ‘BAPS App Wales’ is available for free in the App Store and Google Play.

This story was adapted from: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-50548113. The images were taken from https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-baps-app-wales/id1450394179?platform=i..., as we do not own any of them.