Asthma is a life-long chronic inflammatory disease of the airways that affects people of all ages, race and gender. In Europe, almost 30 million people live with asthma which is also the most common chronic disease in childhood. In addition to the clinical risks that it imposes, asthma poses an enormous psychological and economic burden for both the patients and their families. Despite its increasing prevalence, 1 in 2 asthma patients do not have their asthma well controlled.
myAirCoach project aims to support asthma patients to control their disease through mHealth. New monitoring approaches, combined with the development of novel sensors will form a system that will address the needs of patients on a daily basis. Analysis, modelling and prediction of disease symptoms will serve to stimulate patients to engage in health management, and also increase the knowledge about the possibilities that mHealth can bring to asthma control.
MyAirCoach is in a crucial stage and all partners are intensifying their efforts to deliver the innovative mHealth tool that will improve the quality of life of people with asthma. To update on all evolutions and plan the next steps, the consortium has met in Athens in June.
This year’s eHealth week took place between the 10th and the 12th of May in Malta, where more than 1,000 stakeholders gathered from four different continents. The event was an opportunity to present and share best practices in the area of the eHealth, and especially on the main theme of this year, the access to and the sharing of personal health data.
In a recent TED Ed video, professor Cristopher E. Gaw describes the main symptoms and treatments of asthma.
H&T Presspart has recently presented an new innovative design of Dry Powder Inhalers that is aiming to easier and cheaper manufacturing so as to increase the availability of inhaled medications in the developing world. The proposed design uses capsule drug cartridges, and consists of four plastic parts that are easy to manufacture. Furthermore, this innovative inhaler design promises easier and more intuitive use, supporting one of the main issues related to inhaled medication, namely the incorrect technique of patients.
MyAirCoach is committed in the same direction and has focused over the past two years in the facilitation and improvement of use for the Metered Dose Inhalers.
It is widely recognised that mobile health (mHealth) has the potential to transform the self-management of chronic diseases. For asthma, a chronic disease affecting 30 million children and adults under 45 in Europe, self-management remains a challenge due to poor inhaler technique and adherence problems.
MyAirCoach is a mobile health system that, connected to a multi-sensor based inhaler, measures not only the asthma patient condition and symptoms real-time, but also provides patients and healthcare professionals with information about the environmental factors that trigger asthma around the patient.