GI Monitor iPhone Application for IBD

By Amber J. Tresca, About.com Guide

Updated May 17, 2013

About.com Health's Disease and Condition content is reviewed by the Medical Review Board

GI Monitor allows you to log information about the consistency and blood content of your stool.

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What it is:

GI Monitor is an application for the iPhone, iPad, Android, and BlackBerry that helps people with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) record their symptoms and other metrics, in order to provide that information to a doctor for analysis.

How it works:

GI Monitor is a digital logbook for meals, stool, stress, and pain. When you record a log entry about a stool, GI Monitor notes the date and time, and provides you with choices regarding the consistency and amount of blood in the stool. You choose the level of consistency, (normal, mixed, or loose), amount of blood (none, light, or heavy), and level of urgency (from 1 to 10) from the menu provided. Logs for meals, stress, and pain work similarly.

Notes can be added to logs using a notepad function, and any medications that are missed can also be logged.

A daily log function lets you glance at your records for each day, and uses color-coding to help you assess your stool, stress, and pain on that day (red being severe symptoms, yellow being some moderate symptoms and green being few or no symptoms). A report can be generated for any date range and emailed directly from the iPhone.

The meal tracker helps users to log foods and pinpoint those that may be worsening symptoms.

The medication tracker includes the ability to include dosage, frequency, and start and end dates, as well as a refill reminder.

An online application allows users to enter their information on the web, and sync up with their iPhone. An opt-in will share the log anonymously with physicians for the purpose of IBD research.