Involving patients to develop a mobile system to self-manage asthma
Brussels, 5 May 2015 / WORLD ASTHMA DAY – Despite the wide availability of asthma therapies, many people with asthma still experience lots of symptoms impacting significantly on their quality of life. In line with this year’s World Asthma Day theme “You can control your asthma”, myAirCoach, a leading pan-European project is recruiting patients to develop a monitoring device which is integrated with mobile technology to help people with asthma to take the right steps to stay on top of their condition and reduce their risk of an asthma attack. There are many external factors which can impact an individual’s ability to manage their asthma.
MyAirCoach will use a network of sensors to collect data about a person’s symptoms, inflammation inside the airways and the environment. The data will be transferred to a mobile device for analysis and will feed into a personalized digital model of each individual’s asthma, supporting patients to better manage their condition and optimise their treatment. “This is a really innovative use of mobile technology and has the potential to make a big difference to people with asthma to produce a meaningful tool for patients”, says Breda Flood, President of the European Federation of Allergies and Airways Diseases Patients’ Associations.
Given that asthma needs individualised attention, myAirCoach will put patients at the centre of their asthma management. The project has set up an Advisory Patient Forum (APF) that will guide researchers to ensure that the resulting self-management system is relevant to patient needs. Patient representatives from EFA and Asthma UK will inform the design of myAirCoach through focus groups and surveys to make sure it is useful to patients in the real world.
If you have asthma and wish to be one of the patient experts helping to design a European project on asthma management, please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. You will receive updates on the consultations and activities that will take place under myAirCoach project.
Funded by the EU Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020, myAirCoach represents a great opportunity to demonstrate the wider benefits of involving patients in the development of new technologies to improve healthcare.
myaircoach.eu
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Notes to editors
About MyAirCoach:
- By giving people live access to data about their environment, their medicines and their body’s response to their treatments, myAirCoach will help people with asthma and healthcare professionals to take the right steps at the right time to stay on top of their asthma and prevent attacks
- What is an asthma attack? When a person with asthma comes into contact with something that irritates their airways (an asthma trigger), the muscles around the walls of the airways tighten and become narrower and the lining of the airways becomes inflamed and starts to swell. Sometimes, sticky mucus or phlegm builds up, which can further narrow the airways. These reactions cause the airways to become narrower and irritated – making it difficult to breath and leading to symptoms of asthma, such as breathlessness and wheezing.
About EFA:
The European Federation of Allergy and Airways Diseases Patients’ Associations (EFA) is a non-profit network of allergy, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD) patients organisations, representing 38 national associations in 24 countries and over 400,000 patients. Visit www.efanet.org for more information.
For more information please contact:
- Isabel Proaño, EFA Communications Manager (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., +32 2 227 2720)