H EADLINES
App Continued from Page 10
for an app that could help her
keep track of such things was
germinating back then, but
it wasn’t until the last year
that she began to develop
the fi rst versions of what
became Journal My Health. A
telehealth appointment early
in the pandemic and the fi rst
rumors of what has come to
be called “long COVID” were
the push she needed to try and
make something new.

“It was almost like somebody
was saying, ‘You should do
this,” Welson-Rossman said.

Th e persistence of long
COVID — the still-being-
studied long-term eff ects of
COVID-19, wherein people
who have had the virus suff er
symptoms of the virus well
aft er their initial recovery
— made the development of
the app feel especially timely
to Welson-Rossman and her
team. Welson-Rossman,
a Jewish graduate of Drexel
University, works for Chariot
Solutions, an information
technology consulting fi rm
that counts mobile application
development as one specialty.

Becker, an ear, nose and
throat specialist, contrib-
uted to the app’s design. It
was important to her that
the patterns and trends in a
patient’s condition be easily
legible to medical profes-
sionals, and she believes that
the app does just that.

“It is time-consuming to
extract and identify critical
pieces of patient information,”
said Becker, who is Jewish. “If a
physician can visualize patterns
and trends in a patient’s
A sample of a “Wellbeing Journal” entry
condition, we can be effi cient
diagnosticians and come to
eff ective treatment strategies.”
One hundred patients are
beta testing the app, logging
their symptoms, medications,
treatments, sleep patterns,
stress levels, mood, lifestyle
occurrences, doctors appoint-
ments and other relevant
data. Th ere are still kinks to
be worked out; to Welson-
Rossman’s amusement, the fi rst
support question came from
a United Kingdom user, who
noted that there was an issue
with the app’s clock feature.

Th e app is available from
the Apple Store for iOS devices
and will be ready for Android
and other devices in the future,
according to a press release.

Th e idea is that, eventually,
10 MAY 13, 2021
JEWISH EXPONENT
Courtesy of Journal My Health
the fi nished version becomes
popular enough on a national
scale that Welson-Rossman
and her team could market
Journal My Health to insur-
ance companies and large
employers. It goes beyond long
COVID; 45% of Americans,
Welson-Rossman said, are
aff ected by chronic conditions.

“Our ultimate goal is giving
people with long COVID and
chronic conditions a way to
create better outcomes for
themselves,” she said. “Th is
is possible through the use
of their own data, improved
communications with their
healthcare team, and a demon-
strable way to track progress.” ●
jbernstein@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM