In urgent need of an EpiPen? App may find you one, stat
Israeli researchers have teamed up with Magen David Adom (MDA), Israel’s emergency medical service, to create an app that can provide immediate help to patients having an acute allergic reaction. The app is the first patient-centric social network of its kind for the delivery of emergency medication, Bar-Ilan University said in a statement on Monday.
Millions of severe allergy sufferers are at high risk of going into anaphylactic shock, a serious allergic reaction that can cause death within minutes. The severe reaction can be treated with the EpiPen, a pen-like autoinjector that is used to deliver the life-saving medication epinephrine.
Unfortunately, many allergy patients don’t carry, or forget to carry, their medication with them at all times. In the case of sudden anaphylactic shock, these patients are completely dependent on the timely arrival of emergency services.To address this problem, Prof. David Schwartz and doctoral students Michael Khalemsky and Michal Gaziel Yablowitz, from the School of Business Administration at Bar-Ilan University, worked closely with MDA’s team, led by Dr. Eli Jaffe, to create the “EPIMADA” app. Launched recently, it already has hundreds of registered users in Israel.
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