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Mobile phones have been regarded as potential health hazards almost since they were invented. Now they are being used to improve the lives of thousands of Britons with chronic diseases such as diabetes and asthma.

Eight primary care trusts have adopted software that can be downloaded on to standard mobile handsets after trials showed that it can reduce significantly the complications associated with chronic disorders and prevent hospital admissions. It is also being used to ensure that cancer patients get the right doses of chemotherapy.

The software enables patients to record details about their condition and its treatment, so that they can control it better between appointments with GPs or hospital consultants.

The data collected is also sent automatically to a central monitoring service, which alerts nurses to potentially hazardous changes in a patient’s condition. Those at risk can then be seen immediately by a specialist.

Trials of the software, designed by a company called t+ Medical, have shown that it can reduce average blood sugar levels among both type 1 and type 2 diabetics by between 0.6 and 0.7 per cent. This represents a fivefold reduction in the risk of complications such as blindness or limb amputations.

Another version of the program can monitor the side-effects of chemotherapy, so that oncologists can adjust doses if they are too severe. Other systems are available for asthma, high blood pressure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a lung disorder often linked to smoking.

The software, which costs about £250 per patient per year, has been adopted by trusts in Walsall, Oxford-shire, Norfolk and Norwich, Newham, Southampton, Leicester, North East Essex and Calderdale.

Lionel Tarassenko, a professor at the University of Oxford and a board member of t+ Medical, said that several thousand patients were using the software already, and more were involved in trials. He presented details of the technology yesterday at a medical engineering conference in London organised by the Royal Academy of Engineering.

“There are 12 million people in Britain who have diabetes, asthma, hypertension or COPD – that’s a fifth of the population,” he said. “Chronic long-term conditions are among the highest costs to the NHS, accounting for 80 per cent of all GP consultations.

“It is in between visits to the doctor that these diseases run out of control. By the time anybody notices anything is wrong, they’re in the hospital with an emergency.”

Mobile phones, Professor Tarassenko said, were an ideal way to help patients to control their conditions between appointments, as 90 per cent of the population had access to one. “The main aim of telehealth solutions is to keep patients out of hospital,” he said.

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