Discomfort meter

Visualizes the burden of disease

A serious chronic or acute disease such as cancer has a huge impact on people’s lives. The Discomfort meter is a questionnaire that maps out this impact. It is important that patients complete this regularly, but answering the same questions time and time again without any feedback is demotivating. That is why we now have the Discomfort meter, a smart and friendly way of gaining insight into the impact and course of the disease, for both patient and practitioner.

This is how it works

The Discomfort meter is an app that offers a virtual assistant who asks questions about the impact and course of the disease. But these are not recurring standard questions as they are in the questionnaires. These are smart enquiries based on the patient’s previous responses. Imagine that, in an earlier session, you indicated that organizing daily activities was problematic for you. The Discomfort meter can ask if that is still the case, whether the situation has improved and, if so, how that improvement was achieved. Where current questionnaires merely produce snapshots, Discomfort meter continues the enquiry over the longer term. The app continues regular enquiries about how things are going for the patient, and that offers additional insight into the long-term effects of the treatment. And the patient gets a clearer picture of his or her actual progress. A clear overview of how you have been feeling recently allows you to see whether your situation has really improved or if certain complaints recurred. This leads to greater involvement in the treatment.

The Discomfort meter removes the burden that traditional measurement of these factors involves and replaces it with a tool that makes regular measurements simple, fun and especially more personal and friendlier for both patient and practitioner.