Life-Threatening Allergies: Using a Patient-Engaged Approach

Background: Adolescents at risk for anaphylaxis are a growing concern. Novel training methods are needed to better prepare individuals to manage anaphylaxis in the community. Introduction: Didactic training as the sole method of anaphylaxis education has been shown to be ineffective. We developed a smartphone-based interactive teaching tool with decision support and epinephrine auto-injector (EAI) training to provide education accessible beyond the clinic. Methods: This study consisted of two parts: (1) Use of food allergy scenarios to assess the decision support's ability to improve allergic reaction management knowledge. (2) An assessment of our EAI training module on participant's ability to correctly demonstrate the use of an EAI by comparing it to label instructions. Results: Twenty-two adolescents were recruited. The median (range) baseline number of correct answers on the scenarios before the intervention was 9 (3–11). All subjects improved with decision support, increasing to 11 (9–12) ( p