'Aspirin-Guide' app for clinicians helps personalize decisions about aspirin use

"We developed the Aspirin-Guide app because we realized that weighing the risks and benefits of aspirin for individuals who have not had a heart attack or stroke is a complex process. The new mobile app enables individualized benefit to risk assessment in a matter of seconds while the patient is with the physician," said Samia Mora, MD, cardiologist at BWH.

In a commentary published in JAMA in the June 20 issue, and a review in JAMA Internal Medicine published on the same day, co-authors Mora, and JoAnn Manson, MD, cardiovascular epidemiologist and Chief of Preventive Medicine at BWH, review the evidence behind the use of aspirin to delay or prevent a first heart attack of stroke, and give examples of how the mobile app can help patients and clinicians including:

• calculates a 10-year cardiovascular disease risk score (heart disease and stroke) for the patient
• calculates a bleeding risk score based on the patient's individual risk factors
• uses evidence from the literature, together with the above scores, to compare the number needed to treat vs. the number needed to harm
• helps clinicians to implement current clinical guidelines for low-dose aspirin in primary prevention
• provides the ability to email a summary of the decision-making process to the patient and/or to the clinician for the patient's record.

"Aspirin-Guide is a user-friendly clinical decision support tool, that will facilitate informed and personalized decision-making about the use of aspirin in primary prevention of CVD. Patients should discuss the pros and cons of aspirin treatment with their healthcare provider," Manson said.

The free Aspirin-Guide mobile app, developed for iPhones and iPads with the assistance of computer programmer, Jeffrey Ames, is available at the Apple app store on June 20, 2016.