Harnessing smartphone technologies for stroke care, rehabilitation and beyond

When the WHO first undertook a worldwide programme looking into the mortality associated with 135 diseases in 1990, cerebrovascular disease or stroke was ranked as the second leading cause of mortality.1 Further studies carried out by the WHO in 20012 estimated that stroke accounts for nearly 9.6% of all mortality and that it is indeed a major disease leading to disability and a corresponding reduction in the quality-of-life globally.2 More recently, statistics released by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the USA have highlighted that in that country, stroke accounts for approximately 1 in every 20 deaths.3 Given these alarming statistics, there has been much public health effort to reduce the incidence of the disease. Along with advances in technology and the growing number of web resources, innovations have increasingly been utilised to provide medical professionals, allied health professionals as well as the general public with more information about cerebrovascular diseases, and efforts are being made to help better manage the condition. Divyanshu et al 4 recently undertook a review of the various stroke-related resources in the application stores. They identified various tools currently available in the application stores, which included applications that provide general information; applications that provide information about recent research and advances; various toolkits that could either be used by patients or by healthcare professionals; as well as other awareness and support group applications.4 The variety of current cerebrovascular-related applications available appeared to be holistic enough and could potentially augment various public health initiatives launched by local governments. Of note, their analysis showed that there was a significant difference in scientific validity, with most of the applications targeted for the general population being not scientifically validated.4 In addition, an alarming 87% of these applications …