Grant: Catalyst Grant: Personalized Health Catalyst Grants

Asthma affects 8.3% of Canadians, leads to serious respiratory symptoms, and costs our health system $1.8 billion per year. Health-related smartphone apps can provide patients with personalized health information anytime and anywhere, allowing them to better manage diseases like asthma. Health providers can also benefit from electronic tools to improve the efficiency and quality of asthma care. We previously built the Electronic Asthma Action Plan System (eAAPS) to help doctors to produce an asthma action plan (AAP) - a written form given to patients, with instructions on what to do when symptoms worsen. The system required patients to complete a questionnaire about their asthma on a tablet device in the waiting room and this information was processed and transmitted to their doctor's computer along with a computer-generated personalized AAP. Our pilot study of this tool showed that it does improve care, however less than one third of patients completed the tablet questionnaire. This study aims to improve the system by developing and testing an asthma care app that will: 1) allow patients to complete the questionnaire on their own devices; and 2) provide a tool to help manage their asthma, including displaying the AAP, education about asthma (focusing on confusing health language and concepts), and a "decision aid" that will help patients and doctors to make shared decisions about medications. We will then integrate this app with the eAAPS such that both systems share all data, and test the updated system to see if and how patients actually use the app, if they are satisfied with it, and how it affects their health behaviour. If successful, our unique approach may be a model for the design of similar technologies for the care of other chronic diseases. Ultimately, we will seek to implement our app and asthma care system across Canada to improve not only the way that healthcare is delivered, but also the everyday health of Canada's 3 million asthma sufferers.