Download Team HealthOwl

Michael A. Diefenbach, Ph.D. & Kevin Durr
Mount Sinai School of Medicine &
notsoldseparately.com LLC
An app designed to make cancer screening and its
decision-making process simple and reliable
Background
 Early detection is an important component to the
Nation’s cancer control efforts.
 However:
 Not every person benefits from screening
 Screening can be distressing
 Not all cancer screening procedures reduce Cancer
mortality
 Screening recommendations vary across organizations
 Thus, patients need to be
 informed about their options
 involved in the screening decision process
Aims of the App
 Provide tailored cancer screening recommendations based
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on recorded cancer family history and demographic
variables
Educate users about screening procedures & cancer
prevalance & mortality data by US state
Provides Pros and Cons of screening
Provide decision tool to aid in the decision making process
Testimonials from people who did/did not screen
Provide action plan to assist in identifing physicians,
communicating ones decision to provider, provide
information about screening for the non-insured
Provide reminders about screening appointments
Offers mental health resources for emotional distress
Theoretical Framework
 Self-regulation framework (SLR) guides the development.
SLR has these key elements
 Cancer relevant expectations, beliefs, including self-efficacy
beliefs and beliefs about screening and treatment
 Cancer relevant affective states
 Perceived competencies
 The app will speak to each of these 3 key components, by:
 Addressing beliefs and expectations
 Providing reassuring messages and resources to cope with
distress
 Offering detailed action plans
Use of public available data
 Screening recommendations and screening information
will be generated from NCI’s PDQ and Medline+.
 Prevelance data by state and county level for all major
cancers from http://statecancerprofiles.cancer.gov
HealthOwl on these Platforms
 The app will be available:
 on the web
 On mobile platforms
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iPhone, Android, Blackberry & Windows Phone 7 , and the
Web (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Safari )
 Key Technologies
 HTML5, CSS3, jQueryMobile, PhoneGap
Visit http://www.healthowl.org/tour/ to watch an interactive video tour of our prototype