PURPOSE Epilepsy is treatable but in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) it goes untreated with dire consequences for people with it and their families. There are not enough available doctors to treat it so it has been suggested that non-physician health workers (NPHWs) take a role in diagnosis and management. Tools will be essential to help them. A smartphone application (app) for episode diagnosis has proved safe and effective; this paper describes an app for epilepsy management. METHODS Questions were devised which captured temporal characteristics of episodes, diagnosis of episodes, seizure types, and epilepsy type, together with information on previous investigations, treatment, drug reactions, and current treatment. For untreated patients a management plan was suggested. The app generated a summary which could be sent to a remote specialist for advice. The finished app was evaluated in 23 people presenting with possible epilepsy by four doctors in training and one NPHW; its summary was compared to face-to-face evaluation by a neurologist. RESULTS The app was correct in 22 of 23 (96 %) patients for episode diagnosis, 2 of 2 for symptomatic seizures,18/20 (90 %) for epilepsy type and 9/10 (90 %) for treatment suggestion in untreated patients. The app took less than 15 min to complete. CONCLUSION The initial results suggest that this management app is a worthwhile tool to help inexpert doctors or NPHWs manage suspected epilepsy. Its accuracy is well within reported inter-observer agreement. In its present form it requires input from a remote epilepsy specialist. This combination is a potential solution to managing epilepsy in LMICs.

中文翻译：

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开发智能手机应用程序以帮助在资源有限的环境中管理癫痫病。

目的癫痫是可以治疗的，但在中低收入国家（LMIC）中，癫痫得不到治疗，对患有癫痫的人们及其家人造成可怕的后果。没有足够的医生来治疗它，因此，有人建议非医师的卫生工作者（NPHW）在诊断和管理中发挥作用。工具对于帮助他们至关重要。事实证明，用于发作诊断的智能手机应用程序（app）安全有效。本文介绍了一种用于癫痫治疗的应用程序。方法设计了一些问题，这些问题捕获了发作的时间特征，发作的诊断，癫痫发作类型和癫痫类型，以及有关先前研究，治疗，药物反应和当前治疗的信息。对于未接受治疗的患者，建议采取治疗计划。该应用程序生成了摘要，可以将其发送给远程专家以寻求建议。最终的应用程序由4名接受过培训的医生和1名NPHW对23名可能患有癫痫病的人进行了评估；神经学家将其总结与面对面评估进行了比较。结果该应用程序在23名患者中有22名（96％）正确诊断为发作，在2名患者中有2名是症状性癫痫发作，在癫痫类型中为18/20（90％）和9/10（90％）是未治疗患者。该应用程序不到15分钟即可完成。结论初步结果表明，该管理应用程序是帮助不熟练的医生或NPHW治疗可疑癫痫的有价值的工具。它的准确性完全在已报告的观察员之间的共识内。以目前的形式，它需要来自远程癫痫专家的输入。