“Translated from text published in ‘Epilepsie, Periodiek voor professionals’ in December 2020”
Helpilepsy is a mobile application for patients and an online portal for the neurologist and the medical team to better understand and monitor seizures, medication, and side effects of epilepsy together. It is one of the products of the Neuroventis platform that aims to support the streamlining of care processes within neurology through technology and information exchange. A second product, MigraineManager, has also been launched in the meantime, allowing neurologists to monitor not only epilepsy patients but also headache patients.
The reason for creating Helpilepsy was the brother of one of the co-founders who suffers from epilepsy. After two years of intensive product development, in collaboration with neurologists and patients, Helpilepsy was launched in 2017. Currently the platform is available in the Netherlands, Germany, France, Belgium, Hungary, Switzerland, Austria, and Luxembourg and received the ISO 13485:2016 certification. To this day, we work closely with our users to improve the products.
Self-management and better follow-up
Helpilepsy is a mobile app for the patient or caregiver to better track and understand seizures, medication, and side effects. This can lead to better self-management of the epilepsy. The patient is more informed and can better prepare for a consultation, using an appointment report that clearly shows the evolution of the past months and greatly reduces recall bias. On the other hand, it is a platform with a dynamic online portal for the neurologist and the medical team. Clear graphs show patient data, such as the number and type of seizures, which and how much medication the patient is taking, etc. In this way, the efficiency of certain treatments can be viewed at a glance and, if necessary, the treatment plan can be adjusted on the basis of this data. Recently, patients are able to share not only their health data, but also videos of epileptic seizures with their neurologists in a completely secure environment.
Linking with equipment and electronic patient records
By linking medical devices to Helpilepsy, data can be collected in a more objective way. It is already possible to connect a NightWatch to Helpilepsy. The NightWatch (LivAssured BV, The Netherlands) was developed in The Netherlands and is a clinically proven system to detect epileptic seizures while sleeping. In concrete terms, the link means that the seizures detected by the NightWatch can also be seen visually in the Helpilepsy application and portal. The neurologist can also consult the NightWatch raw data from within the portal. It is not only possible to link with medical equipment, but also with electronic patient files. This allows reports and raw data from Helpilepsy to be automatically displayed in the patient file.
Clinical studies
In addition to its use in daily practice, the Neuroventis platform and the patient-facing apps can also improve the experience of patients and clinical teams in the context of a clinical trial. For example, neurologists and clinical teams can monitor studies (e.g. number of patients included and study documents) in the same portal. Patients can use the Helpilepsy or MigraineManagerApplication to keep track of their attacks and answer study questionnaires digitally. These questionnaire responses are automatically visible in the portal of the clinical team or in the study database.
Further developments
Neuroventis has the ambition to connect more devices to their platform. This can be equipment specific for epilepsy (e.g. seizure detection) but also more general equipment (e.g. Fitbit or Apple Watch). In addition, the team wants to explore the possibilities of artificial intelligence on the collected data, in order to provide advanced insights to both patient and neurologist.
Finally, the Neuroventis team is working on setting up certain care pathways in epilepsy and headache.