HealthTree Webinar: Track My Myeloma

HealthTree is a new tool created by myeloma patients, for multiple myeloma patients to help them throughout their lifetime with the disease. One of the key struggles for each of us as patients is trying to keep a handle on our lab values and what they mean. What lab should we be watching? Can we see how our numbers correllate with our treatments? How do I put everything from multiple facilities in a single place? 

Track your Important Myeloma Lab Markers

In HealthTree, you can track (from multiple facilities) your:

• Key myeloma markers (kappa/lambda, ratio and monoclonal protein levels)
• Immune system status (while blood cells, platelet count, etc)
• Labs that indicate proper organ function (creatinine for kidneys, etc)
• Percentage of plasma cells in the bone marrow (i.e. how much tumor burden you have)
• Gentic markers (from your FISH test or other genetic tests)
• Minimal residual disease (MRD) status
• And other labs myeloma specialists regularly watch

Manual or Auto Lab Entry

Labs can be entered manually (tedious, we know!) or automatically. If your facility is in Apple Health, this can be done using the HealthTree Connect phone app (find instructions here) or the HealthTree team can do this for you. If you need help with manual entry, we can help with that too. Once you have your labs entered, you are shown a graph (see above article image for an example). 

Tracking Other Important Features

You can also track your prior lines of therapy, your outcomes and your side effects. Knowing what treatment you had and how effective it was will help you and other myeloma patients. Watch for a great new feature around side effects coming soon!

You can enter your myeloma genetics in HealthTree. If you don't know your genetic features, you need to ASK! My myeloma specialist always says "If you want to win the war you have to know your enemy." This is commonly shown on your FISH test. Other genetics tests can include the Gene Expression Profile test and the Next Generation Sequencing tests. 

Laying the Foundation for Additional HealthTree Benefits

In addtion to being able to track your disease in a single place visually, this enables you to also:

• Print your lab records and treatment summary out for a second opinion
• See clinical trials you are personally eligible to join (this takes a list of 470 open myeloma clinical trials down to the 10-40 you are actually eligible to join) 
• Find personally relevant treatment options based on your genetics and prior treatments
• Find your myeloma "twin" with similar genetic features, age or other criteria to connect and chat with them
• Join HealthTree studies that are contributing to new hypotheses and a potential cure 

Track My Myeloma Webinar

We hosted a webinar explaining this section of HealthTree. If you have further questions, please feel free to ask us by using the chat feature on www.healthtree.org.