New FRAX tools launched at World Congress on Osteoporosis

FRAX® is a free online fracture-risk calculator (www.shef.ac.uk/FRAX/) that has been developed by the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Metabolic Bone Diseases at the University of Sheffield, UK. More and more physicians around the world are using the tool as an aid in making informed treatment decisions in the course of a clinical assessment of their patients.

FRAX® calculates the 10-year probability of a major fracture and until now was only accessible as an online questionnaire in clinical settings, via the internet.

On the occasion of the World Congress on Osteoporosis 2010 (IOF WCO-ECCEO10), currently taking place in Florence, Italy, the developers of FRAX®, in conjunction with IOF, have announced that the tool will soon be more easily accessible to physicians and patients alike, thanks to the development of the FRAX® Pad and iPhone Application.

In a first stage, the FRAX® Pad will be available in English, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Swedish. This one-page questionnaire in easy tear-sheet form, can be completed by a patient waiting in a doctor's office, by a practice nurse or by the physician themselves and is particularly useful where no internet access exists.

Similarly the FRAX® iPhone Application will vastly increase the accessibility of the FRAX® tool to thousands more physicians and health care practitioners worldwide. Speaking today in Florence, Professor John Kanis, developer of FRAX®, stated that he was delighted to see that the diagnostic tool was becoming increasingly available and utilized worldwide by so many healthcare providers - "Greater accessibility will help more doctors make informed treatment decisions, ensuring that high risk individuals are identified and ultimately leading to the more effective management of patients with osteoporosis," he said.

Provided by International Osteoporosis Foundation