JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Asthma is a chronic pulmonary disease with multiple triggers causing the symptoms. It can be managed by strict adherence to the asthma care plan and by avoiding triggers. The clinician cannot continuously monitor the patient’s environment and their compliance towards the asthma care plan, thus posing a significant challenge for asthma management.

Objective:

In this study, pediatric patients are continuously monitored using low-cost sensors, to collect asthma relevant information. The objective of this study is to evaluate the ability of low-cost sensors to qualify and quantify the triggers and provide actionable insights for the development of a personalized asthma care plan.

Methods:

kHealth-Asthma kit was developed to continuously track the asthma symptoms, environment, and adherence to the care plan of pediatric patients for a duration of one or three months. The kHealth Asthma kit consists of an Android app based questionnaire to collect asthma symptoms and medication intake, Fitbit to track sleep and activity, Peak Flow meter to monitor lung functions, and Foobot to monitor indoor air quality. The patient’s outdoor environmental data is collected using third party web services based on patient’s zip code. So far, in this ongoing study, 107 patients has completed their study who were consented recruited from Dayton Children’s Hospital.

Results:

Out of 107 patients, 24 patients were ignored due to insufficient data and 83 patients were included for the analysis. At the cohort level, among 16 (19%) patients deployed in spring, 10 (63%) and 3 (19%) suggested pollen and Particulate Matter (PM2.5), respectively, as their major asthma trigger. Of the 14 (17%) patients deployed in fall, 4 (29%) and 3 (21%) of the patient’s symptoms suggested pollen and PM2.5, respectively, to be their major trigger. Among the 23 (28%) patients deployed in winter, PM2.5 was identified as the major trigger for 19 (83%) of them. One patient from each season has been chosen to explain their personalized triggers by observing associations between triggers and asthma symptoms gathered using kHealth-Asthma kit.

Conclusions:

The continuous monitoring of pediatric asthma patients using kHealth-Asthma kit generates insights on relationship between their asthma symptoms and triggers across different seasons. This can ultimately inform personalized asthma management and intervention plan. Clinical Trial: None