A mobile application has proven to be an ideal setting for providing assistance to a service member or a veteran struggling with post traumatic stress disorder, said Sonja Batten, assistant deputy chief patient care services officer for mental health at Veterans Affairs Department.

Since its April 7 launch, the VA-DoD operated "PTSD Coach" application has been downloaded to iPhones and Android devices 12,300 times. PTSD patients resoundingly asked for something to help them "get through difficult moments," and now DoD and VA are moving to gather more data, in order to deliver better care, said Batten at a June 28 FedScoop event in Washington, D.C.

"At this point it doesn't collect any personally identifiable information. In the, sort of, next wave of where I would hope it will go--and maybe HHS, GSA and the White House can help us with this--really to find ways to integrate this with the electronic health records, which we have in VA and DoD," said Batten.

Currently the departments receive anonymous, aggregate data from the app. Batten said her team is initiating a controlled research study which allows patients to consent to have their individually identifiable information recorded "so we can get information about what really is usable and what people use the most."

Enhancements are also on the way for the Blue Button mobile app, which allows patients to download their electronic medical records on the go in the case they are not treated in a VA or DoD facility, said Rachel Lunsford, special assistant to the chief technology officer at VA.

In two weeks Blue Button will enable information for lab test results, Lunsford said. Currently, if a patient visits a specialist and doesn't remember a paper print out of his blood test results, he would likely need to have additional, unnecessary blood test, explained Lunsford. The Blue Button app will also soon include XML tagging--"something a little more ubiquitous and a little more standardized" said Lunsford--and images, such as x-rays.

It's likely more functionality will be added to the Blue Button app in the fall, as some ideas from the VA Innovation Initiative (VAi2) are implemented. The competition, which began this spring, resulted in 250 submissions and about half of those were for improving blue button, said Lunsford.

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