Asthma is a serious, lifelong and potentially lethal disease whose prevalence and morbidity have been steadily worsening. Recent data indicate that as many as one fourth of inner city children may have Asthma, with only half aware of the diagnosis. It is also the number one cause of absenteeism and poor academic performance among school children. No simple, time and cost-effective strategy for asthma screening is currently implemented in the schools, even though calls for such a screening have been increasingly raised by school and health officials. The goal is to develop, implement, and field-test an innovative and integrated web-based system for screening, monitoring and managing asthma in three selected Philadelphia middle schools. The Phase I specific aims are to: 1) Develop an interactive, Internet-based asthma questionnaire using multi-media 2) Test the feasibility of this screening instrument on a pilot group of low-income children. 3) Develop a monitoring system capable of providing real-time data analysis and feedback to asthmatic patients, families, healthcare practitioners and school based-staff, 4) Develop a partnership for the field testing of the feedback and monitoring system; 5) Correlate asthma symptoms with academic performance and school absence.
The innovative low cost screening and monitoring system stemming from this study has great commercial potential. Urban schools can increase capitation funding by decreasing asthma related absence. Insurers of urban children with asthma would benefit by reducing emergency room visits and hospitalization. The pharmaceutical industry will benefit by identifying undiagnosed patients and expanding their market. We believe that building a comprehensive and integrated system that can be delivered at a low monthly cost would fill a void in the marketplace for practical telemedicine. Our system will also be available in multiple languages giving us a potential worldwide market.
