An app to help infants with heart defects

A new app to directly connect infants who have had a critical heart surgery with doctors has been created.

The tablet-based app, called CHAMP (Cardiac High-Acuity Monitoring Program), allows doctors to monitor in real-time children with the high-risk, single ventricle heart defect in an automated and accurate way.

Children born with a single ventricle heart defect typically require three surgeries -- one within days of birth, one before they are six months old, and one between three and five years of age.

In the US, there are 3,000 babies with single ventricle heart defects and in India, with the higher birth rate, the number is much higher.

Ten to 20 percent of babies in the US who undergo the first surgery die before having the second surgery.

CHAMP allows doctors to quickly intervene in signs of danger and has reduced the mortality rate while decreasing the burden on at-home caregivers.

For 17 patients who have each used the app for an average of almost three months, it generated over 70 automated pages or calls to the care team from 10 patients and resulted in seven hospital admissions for rapid interventions.

All the 17 patients survived the time period between the first and second surgeries.

Indian-origin doctor Girish Shirali made a presentation on the app at the 2014 American Heart Association scientific sessions held at Chicago Nov 15-19.