App Review: Renal Chart

Created by Iperdesign for Abbvie, Renal Chart is a tool designed to help both doctors and patients manage their renal health. It helps doctors determine if a patient is at risk for chronic kidney disease, something that is only treatable when caught very early. It’s incurable, so just detecting the disease early enough can mean lives saved. That’s exactly what this app does.

Iperdesign has worked on a number of apps and provides them in multiple languages. While the company itself is Italian, the app is available to English speakers, as well. Their apps range from Cupido App to Dale Carnegie Training and everything in between, so there’s plenty of knowledge being put to use here. Abbvie is a biopharmaceutical company with a focus on tech and research, so they have the specialty knowledge to bring life to the app. They produced Renal Chart in order to give patients a new lease on life by catching the possible interference of CKD early on.

How It Works

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a silent killer, since it happens slowly and is irreversible. Over time, the kidneys become damaged and no longer filter the blood as they need to. The result is that waste in the blood is not properly processed. Toxins begin to build up in the body and this causes a range of health issues, including malnutrition, heart disease, and anemia. Unfortunately, these secondary illnesses often show up when it’s already too late to save the kidneys, so it’s essential that people are screened regularly.

With the Renal Chart app, doctors simply input the information they have on the patient and will be shown risk factors and tips to help with the screening. A simple chart identifies if your patient needs further screening or not. It can also identify what stage the patient has reached with CKD. In some cases, the issue may already be quite severe. If this is the case, the patient is at risk of complete renal failure and possibly death.

Risk factors for CKD include a family history of kidney problems, as this type of disease often is genetic. The older you are, the more likely you are to develop kidney disease, as well as if your racial background includes Hispanic, African American, or American Indian blood. High blood pressure and diabetes will also boost your risk of developing kidney disease, so you’ll want to be sure to get screened if you have these risk factors.

Obesity also puts you at higher risk for kidney issues, as does smoking. Polycystic kidney disease, blockage of the urinary tract, and recurrent kidney infections can also mean you are in the high-risk category.

The Renal Chart app will help you identify just who is at higher risk, due to the various factors and the medical information input into the chart. If there is need, the person may be referred to a nephrologist and receive more advanced testing. In some cases, the patient needs dialysis or even a kidney transplant.

For doctors who generally don’t treat kidney problems, the app makes it simple to enter in the patient’s basic information and data, then calculate, based on any of three different formulas, the risk. From there, the patient’s prognosis or possibility of getting CKD will pop up on a color-coded chart that ranges from green (no risk) to red (very high risk). Even the layperson can see at a glance whether they need to seek help.

You will need to have the patient’s urine results in order to enter them into the chart, but this will just make the process more accurate. It measures albumin and protein in the urine, as well as a few other basic things to determine just how healthy the kidneys are.

Pros and Cons of Renal Chart

There are some pretty obvious pluses to using Renal Chart. The app is very useful for determining who is at risk for renal failure and who needs further testing. It is simple enough to use that anyone can add in information. Even laypeople can use the app for checking their risk level. Another pro for this category is the fact that Renal Chart is free.

The downside is that the app is very difficult to find. This may be due to the fact that it is mostly used by Italian-speaking doctors, but the fact that it doesn’t appear on the Play Store makes it hard to use.

What People Have to Say About Renal Chart

The Renal Chart app was named the Best App for Health Professionals in 2014 and is widely praised for its usefulness. Doctors found it to be extremely helpful in the healthcare industry and frequently used it to prevent renal issues from slipping through the cracks. While no one is certain just what happened, the app is now very difficult to find.

Other Apps Like Renal Chart

Renal Chart stands out in its field, but there are other apps available for those suffering from renal failure. The most useful ones are designed to screen patients for potential problems, always with an eye to finding the disease before it becomes too serious.

eGFR Calculators Pro: Renal or Kidney Function is one of the other top rated options available for you. The app requires you to add in some basic information and it will calculate the estimated glomerular filtration rate or eGFR to see how well the kidneys are functioning. The app gives you a rating, based on what your result is and suggests a stage of chronic kidney disease. It also provides recommended actions, based on the information you’ve put in.

The National Kidney Foundation has also produced a basic eGFR calculator that you can use to find out what stage of CKD you’re at. You have the option of using one of five different calculators to figure out the best option for yourself. While this is very DIY, the results allow people to take the information to their doctor for follow-up when discovered.

It should be noted that most CKD apps are designed specifically for diets, but the majority of these don’t use accurate information and should not be trusted. It’s best to use medical-community approved apps instead of any old one.

If you or your patients are interested in getting Renal Chart, it is available for Apple and on Android, depending on what you prefer. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to find now and doesn’t always appear in stores outside of Italy. You may also find that the initial interface is in Italian.#renalchart #healthapps #renalapp #appsfordrs #abbvie #ckd #chronickidneydisease #pharmtech