One of Samsung’s recent arguments against the iPhone is that the iPhone is the phone of old people. But let’s not assume that just because old people like a particular gadget, it must be bad. In any case, the only old person I associate with the iPhone is Lou Reed, who designed an elderly-friendly app called “Lou Zoom” that made text bigger—addressing a stereotypical complaint by the elderly—but he’s still Lou Motherfucking Reed and therefore cooler than some young dads trading videos by bumping Galaxys.
As America simultaneously ages and becomes more smartphone saturated, app developers are proving savvier than their advertising counterparts, with some positive, if unseemly results. For example, this app that helps you prepare for a colonoscopy, with tips and pictures.
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Without going too deep into it, a colonoscopy is a routine procedure recommended for people over 50, to screen their bowels for signs of colorectal cancer, the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the US.
Screen grab from the app in question.
(Lunch Spoilers Ahead, FYI)
The app, which is available for iPhone and Android, allows patients to select their procedure and get timed alerts on their phone as the big day approaches. It was developed and tested by doctors at Arizona Digestive Health, a physician group focused on gastroenterology.
The procedure seems bad enough on its own—with a camera going up the anus to give the doctor a thorough gander of the colon—and on top of that, it involves an unpleasant-sounding preparation process, that climaxes with taking a bunch of laxatives and drinking 73 ounces of colon cleansing liquid. The PDF I looked at promises, “You will have diarrhea, which can be quite sudden. This is normal.” Getting old does sound like a drag sometimes.
Anyway, the preparation starts days before potentially sudden diarrhea sets in, and involves dietary restrictions and taking medication. The more thoroughly a patient prepares, the more effective the procedure is. And patients who used a smartphone app came in prepared at rates demonstrably higher than those who didn’t use them.
The results were made public at Digestive Disease Week, which exists. Apparently people who used the app scored “good” on the Boston Bowel Preparation Scale, which is something else that exists, about 84 percent of the time, versus only 56 percent for people who didn’t.
“We know that better prep means a better colonoscopy,” said Nilay Kavathia, MD, a gastroenterology fellow at Phoenix VA, and one of the application’s developers. “And now we know that this app improves prep. This finding has huge implications for treatment, patient satisfaction and further research in how the use of technology can impact healthy outcomes.”
It might not look great in commercials, but it’s one of better uses for the smart phone we’ve found yet. Normally I think of my phone as just sort of a distracting pest, so it makes sense that if you need to be pestered to do something good for your health—ie, something that could kill you dead—it’s the perfect tool.
Life isn’t all homemade sex videos, selfies and graduations. There’s going to be more apps like this as the smartphone integrates itself into our lives further and further (just imagine what disgusting things Google Glass will do). Let’s just be honest, and admit that so far the best thing about the smartphone is how easy it makes it to use the internet and the toliet at the same time. The colonoscopy app seems as inevitable as getting older.
