LifeMap Solutions, which is best-known for its ResearchKit-enabled app Asthma Health, launched the HealthKit-compliant iOS app, COPD Navigator. Developed in partnership with researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and leading pulmonologists from the Mount Sinai – National Jewish Health Respiratory Institute, the application empowers COPD patients to better monitor and manage their condition.

“With COPD Navigator, we’re aiming not only to empower patients to manage their own health more easily, but also to engage more deeply with their care providers,” said Corey Bridges, CEO of LifeMap Solutions. “We believe that the key to this is COPD Navigator’s summary screens for patients’ health data. Just as happened with the Doctor Dashboard feature in our Asthma Health app, patients will show COPD Navigator to their doctors and initiate data-driven conversations.”

The app relies on evidence-based care guidelines, behavioral science, and patient data to improve patient adherence with the goal of achieving better health outcomes at lower cost. COPD Navigator users will benefit from real-time local weather and air quality alerts, medication reminders, and tools to track their symptoms in order to more quickly recognize COPD exacerbations. The application also empowers patients to easily share this information with their healthcare teams.

An enhanced version of the app, branded as SuperCare iBreathe, will be clinically deployed by SuperCare Health.In addition to the “regular” version of the app, an enhanced version branded as SuperCare iBreathe will be clinically deployed by SuperCare Health, a chronic care management company specializing in respiratory diseases. The iBreathe app is customized with unique data collection points and allows SuperCare Health’s clinical care team to track them in real time and respond immediately to COPD patients enrolled in their Healthcare at Home program.

COPD is one of the nation’s most serious health problems, affecting over 24 million Americans. The condition created direct and indirect costs of nearly $50 billion in 2010, according to the American College of Chest Physicians. To help improve outcomes at lower costs, LifeMap Solutions is partnering with paying commercial entities to deploy COPD Navigator to patients in clinical settings.