Phone apps that track stool habits are as accurate and effective as traditional paper diaries and could help improve the management of these conditions, researchers have found.
Satish Rao, MD, PhD, a professor of medicine and the J. Harold Harrison Distinguished University Chair in Gastroenterology at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, and his colleagues created the apps to remedy common issues with traditional paper diaries. Patients often forget to regularly enter their stool habits—leading to recall bias—or they may be embarrassed to keep a physical log of their symptoms at home. “We said, ‘There has to be a better way of accurately capturing this information at the source,’” Rao told Gastroenterology & Endoscopy News.