Multiple Sclerosis
A patient companion app to empower people with MS
An app paving the way in the future of patient empowerment
Built on real world patient insights, Ekiva-MS addresses the unmet needs of those living with multiple sclerosis, providing support to help manage their disease and treatment journey.
Challenge
MS is an unpredictable disease, with every patient experiencing symptoms and severity differently. This poses ongoing challenges for HCPs when determining a treatment plan and patients can feel a lack of control over their own disease and how to manage it.
Approach
We always take a patient-first approach to creating any product. With our discovery process uncovering key insights, we closely collaborated with patients and our customer, Novartis, to ensure the app supports MS patients.
Result
Ekiva-MS includes symptom tracking, in-app functionality test, educational content and personalized reports. An app paving the way in the future of patient empowerment, we deliver our solutions to patients at speed, with Ekiva-MS being launched in 6 months.
“This will become my go to tool when dealing with the stressful ordeal of going to the doctor and managing my MS.”
Challenge
MS is an unpredictable disease that affects every individual differently.
Every patient experiences different MS symptoms, meaning their treatment plan must be highly personalized if the best care is to be given. For this, historical information around the patient’s symptoms and their disease progression over time is valuable. Within this, many patients face the problem of a lack of sufficient face time with their HCP. Often seeing them only once a year for a short consultation, these talks can lack the data and objectivity of symptom progression needed to provide the best care. Patients can feel alone in their disease management and having to remember any changes they have experienced over a year is an overwhelming prospect.
Approach
Elevating the patient voice through co-creation and uncovering insights.
The Dawn Discovery is a process that enables us to be confident that our products always centre around the patient and addressing their biggest challenges and unmet needs. Co-creation through user testing, interviews and ongoing feedback means that we could directly understand what they would want in a companion app to empower and support them in their day-to-day. Through user research and our design team’s expert knowledge, we determined which features were key to be the most useful for patients in managing their disease, as well as encouraging them to feel supported and empowered to have better, data-driven conversations with their HCP.
Result
A patient-centric app that allows users to take ownership of their disease.
To deliver true patient empowerment, the app needed to fit into people’s daily lives without friction and be easy to use as a part of their disease management. Ekiva-MS includes a number of features to support the user. Symptom logging, mood tracking, informative articles, functionality tests and exporting their logs into personal reports are all within the patient companion app, encouraging patients to share key information and experiences that can empower them in their day-to-day and HCP conversations. We delivered Ekiva-MS to its first market, Germany, in only 6 months, with over 2,000 downloads in the first 8 weeks of launch, highlighting the need for such a product. The Dawn Platform enables us to deliver products to market in such a short time through pre-built concepts, regulatory documentation ready to go and expert teams building products in collaboration with our pharma partners.
Key features
Symptom logging & tracking
As a disease that impacts everyone differently, a major challenge for people with MS is the uncertainty of their disease progression, both with what symptoms they experience and when, as well as the severity of them. Logging symptoms as they occur is a vital way to keep track of progression and map any changes over time, as well as maintaining an accurate record of their symptoms. Symptom logging prevents patients from having to recall how they were feeling months before their appointments. This provides historical data and information from the patient’s own personal experience to take with them to HCP consultations, driving more informed conversations.
Personal reports & consultation support
In order to get the most out of, often infrequent, appointments that they have with their healthcare professionals, patients can export and share reports of their symptom tracking and their day-to-day progress of how they’ve been feeling. Having this data enables more constructive and informative conversations to ensure a more informed and subjective overview to discuss with their healthcare professional. Along with supporting conversations to be more data driven, users can also record their upcoming check-up appointments with their healthcare professional via the app.
Educational content & support
While each person experiences MS differently, there are shared experiences in living with the disease. Ekiva-MS has many in-app articles and educational content that users can read in their own time to help them in their day-to-day life, offering valuable information about MS. The content offers a number of practical tips to help patients deal with symptoms for a more active life with MS.
The content on this page is for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide any medical advice. Please consult a medical professional for any information. The information on this page is not tailored to country-specific requirements. The images depict models secured with correct rights and not real patients. Additional disclaimers may apply in accordance with the Terms of Use. DHDK_WEB_EKVMS_003_V0