There’s an app for that.
Mobile apps focused on health and fitness help users track their physical activity, monitor their diet, set fitness goals, and access workout routines
So what does an app designed for vestibular patients do?
It depends.
There are several options out there. Some have been developed by researchers to collect data while also supporting patients’ ability to track their symptoms, and others have been developed by patients themselves who wanted to give back to the vestibular community.
This article is not an exhaustive list of apps developed with vestibular patients in mind, but it will give you some options to choose from, depending on what your goals are.
Vertige
Vertige was created by Vestibular Migraine and Meniere’s patient, Kristy Carabello. During her recovery journey, Kristy began tracking her symptoms and triggers on paper. “I began noticing patterns and identifying triggers that exacerbated my symptoms, such as certain foods, hormones, and stress,” says Kristy. “Surprisingly, I couldn’t find an app specifically designed to track vertigo episodes, which inspired me to create one myself. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention!”
After answering five onboarding questions and entering your diagnosis the Freemium version allows you to track episodes by ranking the following symptoms low, moderate, high, or severe: vertigo, headache, dizziness, off-balance. It also provides you with daily and weekly summary reports and charts.
The Premium version, which is $7.99/month or $59.99/year, also includes health, environment, and food logs. Under “Health” you can track menstruation, movement/mindfulness, medication, and sleep. Under “Environment” you can track weather, screen time, stress, barometric pressure, allergy level, and pollen count. If you turn on “location tracker” all of these (except stress) will be filled in automatically. Under “Food” you can track caffeine beverage intake, water intake, and trigger foods. There are also additional fields in the episode log, including head pressure, tinnitus, ear fullness, ear affected, and nausea/vomiting.
Available for iPhone only.
Disclosures: Kristy Carabello is a VeDA volunteer. VeDA is partnering with Kristy in a clinical trial using the Vertige app to look at correlations between vestibular symptoms and environmental influences.
Bequalise
Bequalise is a holistic wellness app for women with balance disorders. Their program aims to create a community and guide users day-by-day with personalized training, nutrition, brain exercises, and relaxation tools. Bequalise was founded by a team of healthcare and technology experts, including Dr. Vivianna Mucci, who has worked on MdDS during her PhD and Dr. Vishal Pawar neurologist as well as AI expert Luca Vajani.
Key features include a symptom checker, diary, personalized recovery plan, pill reminder for adherence programs, knowledge base, social support, and referrals to healthcare professionals.
Bequalise’s program includes medication reminders, plus daily tips for lifestyle management, hydration, mental health, nutrition, breathing, fitness, and other educational resources.
The Bequalise app is currently free in beta testing mode. Freemium and Premium versions will be available when the final version is launched. Additional services that are planned for the future include a “Healing Box” that contains materials to collect samples at home to send in for metabolic testing, the results of which will allow Bequalise to suggest a customized recovery plan, including nutrition, supplements, and exercise.
Available for iPhone and Android.
Disclosures: VeDA has a collaboration agreement with Bequalise to share information about their app with our community. In exchange, VeDA receives a donation for referrals.
Apo
The goal of Apo Tech Care is to reduce the burden of monitoring disease and facilitate collaboration between patients and their healthcare providers. Apo was created by a migraine patient in collaboration with vestibular healthcare professionals.
After answering a series of intake questions, you can record an episode by filling in start time, duration, medication taken, impact, triggers and associated signs. The app then synthesizes this data and produces a report that can be printed out as a PDF and shared with your doctor listing key vertigo/dizziness monitoring indicators. A calendar and history of your episodes is also available, and links to some patient education resources.
The app is available for free in several languages, including English, French, Spanish, and Italian; Portuguese and German are coming soon.
Apo has the goal of eventually using anonymized patient reported data for research.
Available for iPhone and Android.
Which App Should I Choose?
Each app has slightly different goals and features, and the look and feel is different. All are available to try for free, so we suggest you download each and give them a try to see if they fit your needs.