SMART Mobile Application Technology Utilization in the Treatment of Sickle Cell Disease Post Day Hospital Discharge

All patients seen for acute care of painful episodes in our Adult Sickle Cell Day Hospital will be screened for eligibility. Currently, there are >450 patients actively followed by staff in our adult Comprehensive Sickle Cell Center, with an average of 60-70 patient day hospital visits per month.

Intervention and control group. Patients enrolled will be alternately assigned to each group to ensure randomization and equal numbers of patients to each arm. All patients will be given a return appointment within 12 days of Day Hospital visit. The control group will get standard of care, including a printed plan for medications to be taken, phone number to call for questions or issues, and the return date for visit.

SMART Overview. SMART, a mobile phone-based self-monitoring service to enhance outpatient treatment in chronic illness will be tested for its utility to help reduce acute care utilization rates for patients given SMART following acute care visits at the Sickle Cell Day Hospital. SMART will enable symptom monitoring with a particular emphasis on pain measures, co-symptoms, and related interventions aided by provider daily monitoring and support guided by patient report via SMART to provide a Sickle Cell Disease Information interchange (SCDi) service. Instead of using their current routine of triaging phone messages daily, assessing patients' need for intervention, providers will instead monitor patients' entries via SMART daily. Our current clinicians, a nurse practitioner or medical doctor, will review data generated from patients' reports, as well as patient phone calls. Data entered daily by patients will be viewable by our clinicians. Rather than only listening to voice mails, a clinician from our provider team will view an electronic record and communicate with patients electronically by push notification, text messaging, secure email, or via the app. Our clinicians may also call patients by telephone, as they would do as necessary when responding to voice mails. .

Inclusion criteria

• documented Hgb SS, SC, or HgbS-beta0 thalassemia
• age 18 years old or older
• seen during an acute care visit at the Duke Day Hospital

Exclusion criteria

• incapable of giving informed consent
• greater than 20 acute care visits within the past year
• patients on chronic RBC transfusions (scheduled transfusions)
• patients admitted to the hospital from the day hospital