AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo announce iPhone app for reflux esophagitis

Heartburn and acid reflux advisory screen

Daiichi Sankyo Co., Ltd. and AstraZeneca K.K. are working to educate the public about reflux esophagitis through a campaign entitled “Do you experience heartburn or acid reflux?” The awareness building effort seeks to ensure an accurate understanding of the symptoms of reflux esophagitis and how they affect the daily lives of patients. The campaign incorporates a variety of media featuring TV commercials and a website to encourage patients to seek the appropriate treatment and take control of their lives.

In conjunction with this campaign, Daiichi Sankyo and AstraZeneca have launched the new “Heartburn/Acid Reflux Notebook” iPhone app (only available in Japanese), which features a variety of functions to help patients relieve their symptoms.

Heartburn and acid reflux advisory screen

Key features

• Symptom checker
  Users can easily record symptoms of heartburn and acid reflux, such as sleep disorder and others. They can also keep notes about their physical condition, troublesome symptoms and questions for their doctor at their next consultation.
• Medication checker
  After registering the drugs they are taking, this tool allows users to set alarms to prevent forgetting their medication and for future hospital visit dates. It also helps users see the decline in reflux esophagitis symptoms.
• Photo meal diary
  This feature allows users to record the number of meals they eat in a day and save photos along with the meal content. In addition to serving as a resource for patients to remember what they ate, physicians can also utilize the information when providing dietary advice.
• Graph of heartburn and acid reflux symptoms
  Progress of heartburn and acid reflux symptoms are saved and the corresponding loss of sleep can be checked in daily and weekly increments. This makes it possible to explain changes in the user’s symptoms to physicians at the time of examination.
• Heartburn and acid reflux advisory
  This feature maps tweets about heartburn and acid reflux to show users how many others suffer from the same symptoms and when.

Japan’s recent shift towards a western diet and lowered incidence of helicobacter pylori infection have resulted in increased levels of acid secretion and reflux esophagitis sufferers are thought to be on the rise. Reflux esophagitis is a disease in which inflammation of the esophageal membrane occurs when stomach contents, including the highly acidic hydrochloric acid (gastric acid), are regurgitated. The main symptoms of the disease include heartburn and acid reflux (an acidic taste in the throat and mouth, accompanied by a feeling that the contents of the stomach are being regurgitated). The Japanese Society of Gastroenterology’s 2009 GERD treatment guidelines state that one or more instances of symptoms per week have a negative effect on QOL, and that the ultimate goal is to relieve symptoms completely.

Daiichi Sankyo and AstraZeneca aim to educate the public about this disease through a variety of media including this iPhone app to help patients take control their lives.

You can download the Heartburn/Acid Reflux Notebook app by accessing www.muneyake-donsan.jp/app via Safari on your iPhone or searching “Heartburn/Acid Reflux” on the Apple Store.