Drug Allergy AlertApp · since 2018
Introduction video 2 min · narrated, with subtitles
Drug allergy looks different in every patient. Even within the same NSAID allergy, a drug that is fine for one patient can be dangerous for another, so it is hard for a patient to judge alone at a pharmacy or a clinic. Drug Allergy Alert is an Android app that carries the contraindicated, caution and safe-to-take drugs recorded for a patient at a university hospital allergy clinic, and shows where a given medicine falls against that record. The answer rests on what the specialist entered for each patient, so the same drug can get a different answer for different patients.
30-second demo
Key features
Allergy record entered by the clinician for each patient
Drugs confirmed in the allergy clinic as contraindicated, to use with caution, or safe to take are entered at the ATC code level, together with an action plan for that patient. Every answer the app gives rests on this record.
Mobile drug safety card
The paper drug safety card the hospital used to hand out now sits on the app screen. The culprit drug and the contraindicated, caution and safe-to-take drugs fit on one screen, so the patient only has to show it at another hospital or a pharmacy.
Drug allergy action plan
The rules a patient has to follow are spelled out as numbered sentences. For example: avoid NSAIDs down to patches and eye drops, but celecoxib and acetaminophen are safe to take.
Instant answer by drug name
Search a brand name or an ingredient name and the app answers at once whether that drug is safe for the patient. When the drug is contraindicated, it also tells the patient to talk to the prescribing doctor.
The same drug, a different answer for each patient
A patient who cross-reacts to every NSAID searches ibuprofen and gets a warning that it is dangerous.
For another patient the same drug is safe
A patient who reacts only to the diclofenac class searches the same ibuprofen and is told it is safe to take. That the answer changes from patient to patient is the heart of this app.
Prescription QR code scan
Photograph the QR code at the bottom of a prescription and the app checks every prescribed drug at once for anything the patient is allergic to. UBcare and EDB provided the technical support behind this feature.
Grand Prize, Health and Medical category, 2018 Smart App Award Korea
The Smart App Award, run by the Korea Internet Professionals Association, is the largest mobile app awards program in Korea. A panel of 3,000 internet professionals judges the apps built that year and picks the best in each category. At the ceremony on December 6, 2018, Prof. Min-Gyu Kang's team in the Division of Allergy and Clinical Immunology at Chungbuk National University Hospital won the Grand Prize in the Health/Medical category. The press release put the app's achievement this way: once patients register their own drug allergy information, they can search in real time whether a given medicine puts them at risk, and they can check a hospital prescription for risky drugs just by photographing it.
User reviews Google Play, names hidden
From the app overview
- As in the case of a death from anaphylaxis after bee venom acupuncture, a patient with severe drug allergy can die of allergic shock after taking the wrong drug.
- Drug allergy differs from patient to patient. Within the same NSAID allergy, one patient can safely take drug A while another can take only drug B.
- So some patients are harmed by taking the wrong drug, and others go without a drug they truly need because they fear the risk.
- The app compares a given drug with the contraindicated, caution and safe-to-take drugs recorded when the diagnosis was made at a university hospital allergy clinic, and shows where it falls.
- Because it works from each patient's own record, the same drug can get a different answer for different patients.
- The app reproduces, item for item, the drug safety card that hospitals have been issuing on paper.