Mobile self-management guide for young men with mild hemophilia in cases of minor injuries

Hemophilia is a group of inherited disorders where a defect or absence of a clotting factor protein limits the ability of the blood to clot following injury. The most common form is Hemophilia A; it is classified as severe, moderate or mild. Those with severe and moderate Hemophilia are likely to experience bleeding into joints and muscles following minor injury and are advised to limit participation in rough activities. Those with milder disorders usually experience bleeds only after significant injury, and may participate in vigorous sports with few consequences. As a result, they sometimes 'forget' that they have Hemophilia, and are slow to recognize injuries which may require treatment. In our ongoing project, we designed a mobile app which is a self-assessment guide for young men with mild hemophilia. The mobile application guides the user in assessing suspected bleeds, applying appropriate first aid, and locating the nearest hemophilia treatment center. In this paper, we detail the architectural design of the mobile app (''HIRT?''). We proposed a three-layered distributed system architecture comprised of the mobile devices, a cloud-oriented proxy and a database server where user feedback is stored for further analysis. The proxy framework is designed to address the challenges of network latency in mobile environments since the primary means of communication is over wireless media. Preliminary evaluation of the proposed system shows high performance boost in terms of the minimization of latency. Furthermore, the usability test shows that the application is convenient to use by both mobile techies and non-techies.