Media Reaction

NAME:   Mary FitzGerald

INTERVIEW:    John Daly  17th April, 2009

OCCUPATION:    Inventor of BodyTab

Background:

BodyTab was developed over two years while she underwent chemotherapy. 

Backed by Medical Experts and the Irish Heart Foundation,  it provides an easy to use comprehensive medical history, stored on file, memory stick or wallet cards for use in all medical situations from regular GP visits to serious illness situations.

KEEPING TABS WHEN YOUR BODY NEEDS IT THE MOST

Great ideas often present themselves at the strangest times.  From Archimedes displacing water from his bathtub to Mr Dyson searching vainly for a spare hoover bag, sometimes the most life-changing moments arrive in the midst of adversity.

For Mary FitzGerald, the first glimmerings of her BodyTab product came to her while awaiting treatment in a hospital emergency room.  On a day when she was forced to cope with the reality of a possible life-threatening disease, a corner of her brain was observing her predicament and formulating a plan that would quickly take on a life of its own.

"I was on life-support in intensive care in Limerick and was being constantly plugged, pushed and pulled at various stages of my treatment,” she recalled on her own Archimedes moment. 

"You’re in a situation where questions come at you in quick succession – had this ever happened to you before, is there a history of this in the family, have you been immunised.  I didn’t have ready answers to some of these questions, and I began to think this was something we should all know about ourselves.”

In a time of most need, the ailments of one’s ancestors can be a pointer for our own misfortunes. 

"In the same ways that many people like to construct family trees of where they came from, it occurred to me that the same could be true of our medical history – the kind of information that can be very important to your treatment and which could also save time at vital moments.”

Like all people facing a serious illness, the Ennis housewife found herself making many hospital visits to a number of different experts.  Though the examination rooms might have been different, the questions were often the same.  “As I ventured deeper into the hospital system to cope with my illness, I discovered that different sections of hospital do not necessarily share files – which was quite relevant to me in that I knew, for instance, that I had an allergic reaction to morphine since my time in maternity. 

As I found myself answering many of the same questions to different specialists about allergies,  symptoms and reactions, the notion that there must be a better and ore organised way to deal with this procedure kept occurring to me.”

"Even for mothers with children who may be forced to make multiple visits to different doctors and specialists, having simple, easy to access family history looked like a product that was badly needed.

There were many times during the early days of my own cancer treatment when I wished for a memory stick or a wallet card that I could give to the attending medical person and say :-  ‘there you are, everything you need to know is on that’.  It was an idea that took hold and wouldn’t let go.”

Researching her subject, FitzGerald discovered that there was nothing out there quite like what she had in mind.  “ At home I spent hours on the internet looking for  comprehensive medical history products I thought would be out there,  I found instead that while there was file packages for cholesterol, diabetes, blood lupus and such like there was nothing that pulled all this information together in one simple record or file.”

Doctors have described the BodyTab system as a new, plain-English way to help everyone to become more knowledgeable and active about their own and their families’ health care – an effective information tool equally important to patients, doctors and health care professionals.

A recent medical journal editorial emphasised that the key to successful clinician-patient partnerships is to recognise that in matters of their own illness, patients are also experts. 

Only the patient has first-hand experience of the effects of their illness, their family medical history, their real social circumstances, habits and behaviour, attitudes to risk, values and preference.  In a modern world where families are frequently extending across oceans and continents, the need for a record of basic medical conditions becomes ever more important.

An integral part of her research on BodyTab was found at the source – GP’s and medical experts working at the coalface.

“I did run the idea by medical people and doctors who were dealing with my own condition, and they confirmed that there was nothing like my idea on the market either here in Ireland or in the UK.  That was a huge boost to me.  With that information I set about putting the idea on paper.  More than anything, I wanted to develop something that would be easy to use and navigate for ordinary mothers and fathers, something that was very accessible and wouldn’t blind people with science.”

BodyTab is both a comprehensive Personal Health Record for every member of the family to use in many situation where immediate access to such knowledge is essential, as well as an integrated information tool to learn about, test and monitor family members for increasingly common medical conditions like asthma, abnormal cholesterol, diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity.

!t encourages people to become actively involved in their own health management and reduces the risk of error due to mis-information and poor communication,” FitzGerald says.

Having already spent €   in its development, Mary FitzGerald now seeks an investor-partner who can see the potential and take it on to a wider level.  “It has received the imprimatur of what I would consider the most important audience – the medical community” she says.  “They kept repeating that it should be simple and easy to use with the information streamlined to maintain a maximum of efficiency and time saving.  And that is exactly what BodyTab is.”

Looking wider than Ireland, she sees an overseas potential.  “We believe that BodyTab is a major value to assurance and insurance companies, for instance, especially in the health sector.”

As a distraction to the reality of her own treatment, FitzGerald credits the idea and its application in providing her with a much needed distraction at a difficult time.  “I was sitting on a hospital bed holding my tube in one hand and the other on my computer,” she says.  “It gave e a focus when I needed it.  Even during chemotherapy, you are still asked question – and at a time when your memory can be affected by the therapy.

"There were some people in that room who often became flustered because they couldn’t recall family details,  and when I saw that I know that BodyTab was something that could be useful for all of us.”