Presenting the Ponto Care app

Dear Professional, 

Oticon Medical has developed “Ponto Care” – a mobile application for both iPhone® and Android™ users. Ponto Care is the go-to app for bone anchored patients. It supports them from Trial to Aftercare and aims to make patients more engaged, independent and involved in their bone anchored treatment. It also provides them with the self-help tools to have a more insightful conversation with you – whether that takes place in person or remotely – in accordance with your hospital/clinic protocol. 

 

Ponto Care consists of two sections:

Ponto Trial Companion and Aftercare.  

  • Ponto Trial

  • Aftercare

Ponto Trial Companion section 

Encourage your patients who are trying a bone anchored processor to make the most out of their trial and have a good post-trial conversation using the Ponto Care app.  

  • Ponto Care guides patients through different listening situations in their daily life and encourages them to rate and comment on these situations using a 1 to 5 scale.
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  • Once they have done the ratings, patients can easily share them with you through the app to an email of your choice. This could be your work email or the department email.
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  • You will receive a one-page PDF report with the patient’s time-stamped trial observations.
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  • You and your patients can use the report to have a more insightful conversation about the trial whether that takes place in person or remotely – in accordance with your hospital/clinic protocol.   

 

Aftercare section

Empower your patients to make the most out of their life with a bone anchored device using the Ponto Care app to: 

  • Get answers to their questions about Ponto and living with bone anchored hearing. Topics include how to change batteries, maintain their device and what to do in case of an MRI.
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  • Check their implant site by regularly taking photos guided by the app’s smart camera feature and compare them over time.
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  • Track their hearing experiences in a digital diary.
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We have developed some supporting material – an offline brochure and online videos – that you can use with your patients to explain the practical details and benefits of the app. 

 

The following examples show how the Ponto Care app could be used in your daily work: 

For your patients undergoing a bone anchored trial:

  • Invite patients to download the Ponto Care app on their phones when you hand over the trial processor.  
  • Encourage patients to rate and comment on as many listening situations as possible during the trial and make sure patients have an email address so they can share the report with you. This could be your work email address or the email address of the department.  
  • Tell your patients that it could be helpful to receive the one-page PDF report two days before the visit so you can learn about their experience. Consider sending a reminder to them – maybe a department secretary can help with this. 
  • Discuss the patient trial experience at the visit using the one-page PDF report as a starting point to have a more insightful conversation, whether that takes place in person or remotely – in accordance with your hospital/clinic protocol.    


For your bone anchored patients: 

  • Advise patients to install the app on their phones before surgery or as soon as possible after. If they have used the app during the trial, you can easily help them move to the Aftercare section of the app by clicking on the arrow-shaped button on the top right of the first screen (Image 1).  
  • Encourage patients to browse the Living with Ponto feature and find answers to the questions they might have about surgery and aftercare.  
  • Encourage patients to check their implant site by regularly taking pictures of the site with the smart camera, adding comments and saving these pictures to their phones. You can take the first picture with them at the post-op visit and mark it as Reference (Image 2). This will let you show patients and accompanying family members how to take pictures and give them a good baseline to refer to. 
  • Invite patients to use the Diary feature to write down observations about their hearing.
  • At the follow-up visits, whether that takes place in person or remotely, the patient can refer to the pictures and observations in order to have a more insightful conversation.  

 

Oticon Medical does not save, store or process any of the photos taken using the app. Oticon Medical does not keep any information from the app or share it with any third party. 

The Ponto Care app is designed to support the patients in their daily life as bone anchored users. 

Important: The app is not a medical device and has no medical purpose and shall not replace the ordinary contact with the patient.