Skin Tracker: A Mobile Health App to Monitor Skin Disease Activity and Treatment Use

Design and beta-test a research-oriented mobile health app to assess disease activity, quality of life, treatment patterns, adverse medication effects, and lifestyle factors in patients with atopic dermatitis.

Mobile health technology, including smartphone apps and wearable monitors, has tremendous potential to transform clinical research. Recording of patient outcomes on a smartphone device and camera in the home setting can greatly reduce the number of in person research visits, saving tremendous costs, time, and effort associated with data entry. This also allows for easier recruitment of study subjects, who can be enrolled in geographic locations beyond academic research centers. After FDA approval of a therapy, mobile health technology can help researchers understand how that particular therapy is being used in a real-world setting, including frequency of use, adverse events, and impact of use on disease symptoms and patient quality of life. In this study, the investigators will create a mobile app to help the atopic dermatitis community understand the types of data and quality of data that can be gathered from atopic dermatitis patients longitudinally. A review of existing atopic dermatitis mobile apps on the market reveals they are consumer-oriented and may not be able to fully capture high-quality research data. The investigator proposed app is specifically geared for research, and thus fills an important gap. The research team will develop SkinTracker, a research-oriented eczema app to longitudinally track atopic dermatitis severity, symptoms, quality of life, physical activity, medication usage, and adverse events in a real-world setting.