Boehringer Ingelheim has launched a new smartphone app that aims to assist healthcare professionals during consultations with COPD patients.

The target audience for the new COPD Exchange app is primarily GPs, nurses and pharmacists, and it provides smartphone access to the calculator tools already available on the company's educational website of the same name.

The app is available in two versions, one for Apple devices like the iPhone, and one that's an HTML5 'web app', allowing Android, Windows and Blackberry smartphones to access a mobile optimised website version.

The free app, which will only be available to healthcare professionals that have registered on the COPD Exchange website, is designed to support practitioners in both patient treatment and best practice. 

It offers a range of tools, including:

• Spirometry calculator to quantify the amount of airflow obstruction

• Pack years calculator to determine lifetime tobacco exposure

• Fletcher & Peto chart to demonstrate the benefit to lung function of quitting smoking

• Body mass index (BMI) calculator to establish whether a patient's weight is within a healthy range/

Boehringer hopes the easy accessibility of an app will prompt HCPs to source information via their smartphone while simultaneously viewing patient data on their existing IT systems.

Respiratory marketing manager Fiona Harte said: “Boehringer Ingelheim is committed to improving the outlook for patients with respiratory conditions such as COPD and so it is vital that we help clinicians not just combat the disease with effective treatments, but also aid them in quick diagnosis and effective patient management as well.”

The COPDexchange.co.uk site was created by Boehringer and its Spiriva marketing partner Pfizer to provide peer-reviewed information to healthcare professionals involved in the treatment of COPD.

The site has over 7,000 members - predominantly UK nurses and GPs, but Boehringer said that recently it has been attracting an increasing number of pharmacists – and it receives between 2,000 and 3,000 visits per month.

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