Grant: DRA : Canada Graduate Research Scholarship - Doctoral Program (CGRS D)

In this study, we aim to evaluate whether integrating artificial intelligence (AI) solutions into the process of care will improve asthma outcomes in primary care. Asthma is one of the most common chronic respiratory diseases in Canada. Over 4.6 million Canadians are living with the disease, placing a substantial healthcare burden on the individual and society. The Canadian Thoracic Society publishes national guidelines providing best-practice recommendations for healthcare providers. These guidelines outline how to diagnose and manage asthma, provide recommendations to improve disease control, and aim overall to limit life-threatening asthma attacks and preventable asthma deaths. However, despite these guidelines and various interventions to implement them, gaps between best-practice and current clinical practice persist. For example, many studies have shown that asthma is both overdiagnosed and underdiagnosed in Canada, significantly impacting asthma patient outcomes. One of the most important barriers to optimal asthma care in Canada is the limited use of breathing tests, or objective measures of lung function, to confirm the clinical suspicion of an asthma diagnosis. AI has the potential to be an important tool in addressing the limited use of breathing tests in Canadian primary care practice. In this study, we propose to develop an AI technology with the capability to search a primary care Electronic Medical Record (EMR) to find asthma patients who have not had a breathing test to confirm suspected asthma. It will also provide decision support by prompting the primary care provider to follow the next steps of optimal asthma diagnosis and management, including referral for a breathing test and asthma education. Overall, we hope to demonstrate the utility of AI guided interventions to improve asthma diagnosis and management in primary care. Our findings will also demonstrate the potential for similar technology to be applied for other chronic diseases.