Patients
How often you use your inhaler is a sign of how well controlled your asthma is, and where you use your inhaler can provide clues about what is causing your symptoms.
Experts recommend that patients record information about their asthma every day but pen and paper logs have many limitations.
Asthmapolis tools simplify and streamline the process – helping you record and make use of day-to-day information about your symptoms, triggers and medication use.
The Spiroscout automatically tracks the time and location where you use your rescue inhaler, and the mobile diary allows you to log and review other important information about your asthma, and even to review asthma in your community.
Here’s what patients in our studies have reported:
More awareness of asthma control and patterns of asthma
- “I used my inhaler more than I remember, and noticed patterns in the time of day I was using my inhaler.”
- “I was able to see and relate to my doctor that my asthma is not under control.”
Increased understanding of triggers
- “I’ve been more keen to note surroundings when I feel shortness of breath; it opened my eyes to triggers I wasn’t aware of in the past.”
Better preventive practices
- “I’m now using my controller medicine more regularly and on time.”
- “I really noticed that usage went down significantly when using a daily inhaler as well.”
Physicians and health care providers
Despite the development of more effective medications, asthma remains a significant and costly health problem. While many asthma exacerbations could be prevented with appropriate treatment, the majority of patients do not have adequate control of the disease and the majority of patients do not use preventive medications as directed.
The National Asthma Education and Prevention Program (NAEPP) guidelines urge doctors to more closely monitor whether treatment is controlling symptoms and improving quality of life. But physicians have few methods to assess how well their patients are doing, and often underestimate the frequency and severity of their patient’s symptoms, and the extent to which their patients are adhering to the prescribed regimens of preventive medications. Patients also need tools that help them recognize when they need help, and better ways to convey that information to their doctors.
Yet asthma is unique in that nearly everyone carries a rescue inhaler (bronchodilator) to immediately relieve symptoms wherever they occur. Frequent symptoms and inhaler use are the most important indicators of current impairment and future risk. In fact, NIH and ATS recommend tracking use of inhaled bronchodilators as a robust measure of asthma control.
With Asthmapolis, physicians and health care providers can now identify in near-real-time patients with uncontrolled disease and attend to them before they suffer a severe exacerbation. In addition, our tools let patients quickly record use of controller medications, and deliver targeted reminders when needed, to help spur adherence to controller medication.
To date Asthmapolis has been used to:
- Identify patients with uncontrolled asthma and improve the quality of care
- Increase understanding of asthma triggers and the importance of environmental control practices
- Monitor and encourage adherence to controller medications
- Deliver targeted asthma education messages
Scientists
Asthma is unique in that an important medication is often used at the time and place of exposures that cause symptoms. Yet, studies of asthma and environmental exposures typically rely on health care utilization or patient reported asthma morbidity as primary outcome measures.
These indicators have a variety of limitations, and are often affected by recall bias and different interpretations of symptoms. In addition, they offer no information about where symptoms began, or the location where the exposure occurred. As a result, exposure assessments must use proxy locations, such as home or school address.
With Asthmapolis, scientists and researchers can now track exactly where and when symptoms occur and asthma inhalers are used, and what triggers patients perceive as responsible for the development of symptoms.
Our projects include:
- assessing the effects of air pollution exposure among children with asthma, and
- mapping and characterizing asthma attacks among rural residents of the Midwest
The goal is to bring remote monitoring to asthma epidemiology to provide an objective, accurate and reliable record of the burden of asthma and spatiotemporal patterns of asthma symptoms and exacerbations.
Public Health
A primary goal of Asthmapolis is to provide more timely, comprehensive and objective data on the burden of asthma in communities.
When the Spiroscout and mobile diary are used by people in their communities, asthma epidemiologists and public health researchers now have information on the patterns of asthma medication use as well as a variety of key surveillance outcomes for which data has previously been absent, of poor quality, or untimely.
For example, public health partners may now access data on:
- adherence to controller medication,
- most common symptoms and triggers
- absences from school and work, and
- asthma-related health care utilization (including office visits, emergency room visits, and hospitalizations).
We want this accumulated data to be used to strengthen ongoing asthma surveillance activities, and to improve scientific understanding of disease triggers and progression. If you’re a public health agency that wants to complement your asthma surveillance and better target and evaluate your interventions please contact us.
