IBS Diary App from Buscopan
As all IBS sufferers are all too aware of, IBS is a complicated illness at the best of times. I’m sure we’ve all been there trying to work out what bit of food has upset us or was it that deadline in work that we has to meet that has stressed things out a bit too much.
I was therefore eager to find out if the IBS Diary app by Buscopan would really be able to help bring some clarity to my symptoms.
My first impressions are good. I like the bright, easy to see colour scheme. Buscopan’s colours obviously feature prominently but this doesn’t distract from the usability of the app. It’s quick to load and is easy to navigate right from the start.
One thing I should point out is that it doesn’t appear to work on all smart phones at present. Hopefully this only a temporary issue and I’d recommend installing the app and see if it works on your phone – hopefully it will!
You’re told early on that this app is aimed for people who have been medically diagnosed with IBS and not for people who simply suspect they may have it which is good point to make.
The app is split into three easy to navigate sections. The first and probably most extensively used one is Food and Drink. This allows you to log everything you’ve consumed in that particular day. It’s very simple to use, simply scroll down a list of sub categories and select the number of particular items you’ve had of that particular food. Its simplicity though is perhaps its main limitation. For example, you can select alcohol as a category but not which type of alcohol which in my experience makes a big difference to symptoms e.g wine, beer, spirits.
In the past I’ve used the MyFitnessPal app to track the food I eat. This gives a much more comprehensive list of foods. Perhaps this or a similar app could be incorporated into the IBS Diary App in future?
There’s also no mention of pre or pro biotics. As many sufferers have found success in managing their IBS by using these in their diets, the inclusion of supplements into the app might have brought added benefits.
Section two, Stress, gives you the chance to select how stressful your day has been based on three alternatives. As we know, stress plays an integral part in IBS and it’s important to understand how it affects your symptoms.
Finally, the final part deals with symptoms. This is where I feel the app really comes into its own. It has a comprehensive list of possible symptoms that you might encounter with the chance to rate the severity. Included are a lot of the symptoms that don’t often get much of a mention such as nausea and back ache so I was impressed to see that these and others hadn’t been forgotten.
The statistics part of the app aims to bring together all of your data and hopefully show some patterns to your symptoms. This is quite well done with graphs showing your symptoms against the day of the week.
In summary, Buscopan have done a pretty reasonable job with the IBS Diary app. It was always going to challenging to try and bring all the aspects of IBS together into an app but it’s definitely user friednly. More work needs to be done with the Food and Drink part of the app – this is just too simplistic at the moment with portions sizes and food types being too general being the obvious drawbacks.
The fact that it’s an app and that they’ve focused on simplicity where possible makes it very easy to fill in when you’re out and about or when you have a spare minute.
I like the charts as they’re easy to follow and track your symptoms. It’s good to see this out there available for free but improvements can be made. The challenge is how to balance the complexities of IBS with keeping an app usable.
What would really be useful if the app can be developed further would be to bring all the date together (anonymously of course) so perhaps patterns could be identified to as to perhaps help with future treatments for IBS.
On the whole I’d definitely recommend trying the app if you’re looking to try and look for some kind of pattern with your IBS symptoms.
As all IBS sufferers are all too aware of, IBS is a complicated illness at the best of times. I’m sure we’ve all been there trying to work out what bit of food has upset us or was it that deadline in work that we has to meet that has stressed things out a bit too much.
I was therefore eager to find out if the IBS Diary app by Buscopan would really be able to help bring some clarity to my symptoms.
My first impressions are good. I like the bright, easy to see colour scheme. Buscopan’s colours obviously feature prominently but this doesn’t distract from the usability of the app. It’s quick to load and is easy to navigate right from the start.
One thing I should point out is that it doesn’t appear to work on all smart phones at present. Hopefully this only a temporary issue and I’d recommend installing the app and see if it works on your phone – hopefully it will!
You’re told early on that this app is aimed for people who have been medically diagnosed with IBS and not for people who simply suspect they may have it which is good point to make.
The app is split into three easy to navigate sections. The first and probably most extensively used one is Food and Drink. This allows you to log everything you’ve consumed in that particular day. It’s very simple to use, simply scroll down a list of sub categories and select the number of particular items you’ve had of that particular food. Its simplicity though is perhaps its main limitation. For example, you can select alcohol as a category but not which type of alcohol which in my experience makes a big difference to symptoms e.g wine, beer, spirits.
In the past I’ve used the MyFitnessPal app to track the food I eat. This gives a much more comprehensive list of foods. Perhaps this or a similar app could be incorporated into the IBS Diary App in future?
There’s also no mention of pre or pro biotics. As many sufferers have found success in managing their IBS by using these in their diets, the inclusion of supplements into the app might have brought added benefits.
Section two, Stress, gives you the chance to select how stressful your day has been based on three alternatives. As we know, stress plays an integral part in IBS and it’s important to understand how it affects your symptoms.
Finally, the final part deals with symptoms. This is where I feel the app really comes into its own. It has a comprehensive list of possible symptoms that you might encounter with the chance to rate the severity. Included are a lot of the symptoms that don’t often get much of a mention such as nausea and back ache so I was impressed to see that these and others hadn’t been forgotten.
The statistics part of the app aims to bring together all of your data and hopefully show some patterns to your symptoms. This is quite well done with graphs showing your symptoms against the day of the week.
In summary, Buscopan have done a pretty reasonable job with the IBS Diary app. It was always going to challenging to try and bring all the aspects of IBS together into an app but it’s definitely user friednly. More work needs to be done with the Food and Drink part of the app – this is just too simplistic at the moment with portions sizes and food types being too general being the obvious drawbacks.
The fact that it’s an app and that they’ve focused on simplicity where possible makes it very easy to fill in when you’re out and about or when you have a spare minute.
I like the charts as they’re easy to follow and track your symptoms. It’s good to see this out there available for free but improvements can be made. The challenge is how to balance the complexities of IBS with keeping an app usable.
What would really be useful if the app can be developed further would be to bring all the date together (anonymously of course) so perhaps patterns could be identified to as to perhaps help with future treatments for IBS.
On the whole I’d definitely recommend trying the app if you’re looking to try and look for some kind of pattern with your IBS symptoms.