A mobile app aims to ease stretched health care services by providing gout patients with more control over their condition.

Experts from Edinburgh University in the United Kingdom say larger trials are now needed to evaluate the clinical and cost-effectiveness of the approach.

It comes after 40 patients taking part in a small study were given a device to test their urate level – the amount of uric acid in the blood and the single most important risk factor for developing and controlling gout.

They then used a smartphone app – called GoutSMART (Android/iOS) – to communicate their results to a health care team, who provided instant treatment advice.

The results from this were compared against 20 patients who were given the usual care, with a plan from their GP to manage the condition.

Almost three-quarters (73%) of those using the phone app reached the target urate level, compared to 15% of parents given more traditional care.

Gout is the most common cause of inflammatory arthritis and affects an estimated 20,000 people in Edinburgh alone, with high levels of uric acid in the blood causing crystals to form around the joints, causing pain for sufferers.

The number of people with gout has risen in recent years due to increases in the rates of contributory conditions such as obesity and cardiovascular disease.

Speaking about the study, "Supporting patients to manage their own gout can transform clinical outcomes, and the approach we have developed offers a way of doing this without putting more pressure on an already stretched health care service," Dr. Philip Riches, consultant rheumatologist at the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Genomic and Experimental Medicine, said.

The study was funded by the Edinburgh and Lothians Health Foundation and is published in the medical journal The Lancet Rheumatology.