The FDA's new app for frontline doctors could help discover Covid-19 treatments faster

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Fri, 2020-09-11 09:13 — mike kraft

The FDA's new app for frontline doctors could help discover Covid-19 treatments faster The Food and Drug Administration's Cure ID app is allowing doctors to communicate about drug therapies. The plan is to more quickly find new uses for old drugs to combat difficult-to-treat diseases like Covid-19. Ryan Prior, CNN CNN

(CNN)In the trenches of the fight against coronavirus, Dr. Raghav Tirupathi often has little time to think and no textbook to follow while treating patients with Covid-19.

That's why the infectious disease specialist in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, finds himself increasingly turning for guidance to Cure ID, an app developed by the US Food and Drug Administration enabling doctors to consult with each other across hospitals, academic disciplines and international borders.

He uses many of the established treatments -- the antiviral drug remdesivir, the corticosteroid dexamethasone and convalescent plasma. But in the minutiae of a patient's given situation and with treatment guidelines regularly updated, the Cure ID app is vital for him to compare notes with other doctors about which drugs to administer, and in what order.

"Things happen quickly and we can't afford to think about phases," said Tirupathi, who practices in a rural community hospital. "They reassure me that I'm not the only one doing it. We use Cure to justify what we are doing in our institution." ...

The app wasn't designed for a pandemic, but it's just in time for one.

Launched by the FDA in December 2019, the app has enabled doctors to write and submit anonymized case reports about their patients in just minutes for 325 distinct diseases.

After downloading it from Apple's App Store or Google Play, users confirm they are licensed health professionals. Then they can view case reports organized by disease, create their own reports and engage with the medical community via the app's community forum. ...

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