On 17 September 2016 the Interdisciplinary Centre for Rare and Genetic Skin Diseases, Department of Dermatology at the University Hospital of Munich (LMU) and the MyTherapy app received the Kindness for Kids Health Care Award for their collaborative project ‘MyTherapy DermaKids’.

The project involves the development of the MyTherapy DermaKids app, which will enable children with the rare congenital skin disorder Ichthyosis to manage their daily treatment using a playful approach. The free program builds upon the existing MyTherapy app and will be specifically designed and developed for children. In addition to disease-specific documentation features, the MyTherapy team will be incorporating age-appropriate motivational elements into the app.

Ichthyoses are a group of genetic skin disorders that require daily special care.

“The treatment is rather demanding and children usually find it difficult to keep it up on a daily basis” says the director of the centre at the University Hospital of Munich, Prof Kathrin Giehl. “With MyTherapy DermaKids we want to motivate children and their families to stick to their daily treatment routines. An improvement in adherence to treatment should in return improve the outcome, giving these children a greater opportunity to live a better quality of life”.

The board member of the Kindness for Kids Institute, Prof Frankenberger-Meyer, selected the collaboration for a specific reason:

“MyTherapy DermaKids applies the appeal of smartphones to relieve the burden of the daily treatment requirements to children and their families. This approach is not only innovative, but also holds great potential for children with other skin disorders to follow suit.”

The specially designed features will be available for all MyTherapy usersin the readily-available free app (iOS and Android) after the 8-month observational study is complete.

For more information please visit: www.mytherapyapp.com