Tobias Hartz*, Institute of Medical Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics, Mainz, Germany Nicole Schmelzer, Institute of Medical Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics, Mainz, Germany Holger Storf, Institute of Medical Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics, Mainz, Germany Frank Ãœckert, Institute of Medical Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics, Mainz, Germany Track: Research Presentation Topic: Mobile & Tablet Health Applications Presentation Type: Oral presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Building: Sol Principe Room: A - Alhambra Date: 2014-10-10 02:50 PM – 03:35 PM Last modified: 2014-09-03

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Background: The amount of communication via social networks and messengers in the fashion of Facebook and WhatsApp has rapidly increased since their introduction. Simultaneously, the usage of services such as SMS and MMS have started to decrease continually and have been superseded by Facebook and co. The usage of such messaging services in a clinical context, e.g. between patients and doctors sounds very promising, too. However using these networks – especially their usage in a clinical setting – leads to the question of how secure they really are, who is holding the data, and how much information is shared unknowingly and without permission.

Objective: We create an alternate messenger, especially for clinical settings. The purpose of the messenger lies in supporting patients and their familie in bonding with other patiens.

Methods: The functionality of the messenger comprises sending messages in a pair as well as in a group of people. Other users can be found via a search and added to an ignore list if the user does not want to receive their messages. Furthermore, the user has complete control over the extent of information regarding himself that other users are allowed to see. The implementation of the messenger consists of three components: A client which uses PhoneGap to be able to deploy the mobile messenger on a variety of different operating systems of smartphones such as iOS, Android, and Windows phone and two servers. Whereby the first one serves as a communication server which forwards messages from one client to the other. In this case Openfire, a real time collaboration server which uses XMPP as a protocol for instant messaging, takes on the role of the communication server. The second server stores information about the users which they knowingly shared such as their username, email, gender, et cetera, and acts as a data server.

Results: To date the basic functionality such as sending and receiving messages as well as creating groups to share messages with more than one person has been implemented. Additionally the user is able to search for other users and add them to an ignore list. The service is hosted by the clinic itself. Further functionality which concerns security issues such as sending encrypted messages and using secure connections are not implemented yet and will be an objective for the released version of the mobile messenger.

Conclusion / Outlook: Our mobile messenger offers an alternative to the known social networks and messengers and shows the possibility of a more secure way of text-based communication. No third party is involved. The next objective is the usage and testing of our messenger in a clinical setting. One scenario in which our messenger could be of aid is in the ambulant palliative care. Care4Talk shall support communication between medical staff and patients and their relatives.