A Personal Handheld Device to Support People with Life-Threatening Anaphylactic Allergies (PervaLaxis)

This paper presents PervaLaxis, a personal mobile health device designed to help anaphylactic people manage their life-threatening allergies. PervaLaxis was designed to support allergic patients both in everyday life and in emergency scenarios where an injection of adrenaline may be vital. PervaLaxis is implemented on a Smartphone platform and communicates wirelessly with adrenaline injectors. In emergency scenarios, PervaLaxis can detect an injection of adrenaline and send a message automatically to emergency services; in normal life PervaLaxis can support adrenaline injector training, for example with video demonstrations and can support medication management, for instance, managing adrenaline expiration dates. In this paper we present user requirements and evaluation results for PervaLaxis, furthermore we explore the issues associated with the patient-oriented focus of the device (as opposed to health devices designed for expert use) and how this could benefit personal health management. We evaluate usability performance and propose directions for future work based on user feedback.