Asthma+me solution for Childhood Asthma
Asthma+me supports smart pressurised metered-dose inhaler tracker – PUFFClicker (pMDI) developed by Aseptika, connecting wirelessly to Asthma+me App counting inhaler doses, reminders to take doses. Patient-generated data is used to incentivise adherence through novel motivating rewards system. Other Bluetooth devices can also connect to Asthma+me App: Peak Flow, smart scales, Pulse Oximeter and activity tracker. See this video of the Asthma+me solution here.
Asthma+me App is the first remote monitoring self-care solution implemented in paediatric clinical trials. Has potential to support: self-care of asthma at scale, digital transformation, risk stratification; personalised approach to care, thereby reducing emergency admissions, improving patient safety and quality of life.
Asthma+me, a comprehensive CE-marked technology-enabled self-care solution supporting children with asthma to bridge transition from hospital outpatients back to primary care. Specifically designed to meet needs of children 5-12yrs. Has 2 versions within the same App; child-friendly view and parent/carer view making it different from any adult asthma management Apps available.
NHS England reported in 2015-16 there were 6,974-asthma related emergency admissions for children lasting more than 1 day, at a mean cost of £1,706 per admission. Latest available figures reveal that 21 children under 14 years old died from asthma in 2012 and NHS England reports that preventable factors were involved in 90% of childhood deaths from asthma. The current care management programme is based on primary care visits and referral to specialist clinics as required. Asthma care management plans represent the current clinical management solution and there are no available disease status monitoring and decision support systems available. It is evident that there is a market opportunity for Asthma+me and that remote disease monitoring could have a major impact on delivering better disease management for healthcare providers and patients.
Asthma+me solution already has the capability to provide basic disease monitoring via connected devices, patient educational and motivational support through our Cloud-based solution, applying the six pillars of self-care (Pinnock et al, BMC Medicine,201715:64) to reduce the severity of asthma attacks, A&E attendances and hospital admissions for children with moderate-to-severe asthma.
With access to a specialist paediatric asthma clinic at NHS Hospital an RCT is being undertaken to use Asthma+me to analyse the potential benefit of AI integration for more effective asthma management of children with moderate-to-severe asthma.
All Activ8rlives solutions generate huge amounts of data. This makes it challenging to review all patient data. Internal development programmes have demonstrated use of Deep Learning/Neural Networks (Artificial Intelligence) can be used to accurately forewarn of decline in health by up to 7-days – enough time to start emergency treatment with antibiotics or steroids for example.
In the current RCT we are applying these novel techniques to warn parents when their child is likely to have an asthma attack. Adding Neural Networks to provide patients and clinicians with actionable insights (7-day warnings) would make the classification of Asthma+me SMART a Class IIb medical device under MDR 2017/745.