Asthma is a chronic inflammatory airway disease that leads to episodic symptom exacerbations, which extoll a substantial burden on the patients' well-being and can be life threatening if not controlled adequately. Despite progress in the pharmacological treatment of asthma, overall asthma control remains unsatisfactory. Although trigger avoidance is recognized as a key element of asthma self-management, and elaborate trigger avoidance modules have been developed and distributed, their actual implementation has had mixed success. Problems lie in the variety of potential triggers, lack of systematic monitoring of triggers, and unobtrusive physiological monitors for conditions like hypocapnia are still missing. The goal of this proposal is to develop a comprehensive monitoring system that will allow simultaneous monitoring of critical environmental triggers of asthma symptoms and/or exacerbations as well as real-time physiological status of pediatric asthma patients. This will provide patients with objective information about their momentary trigger exposure with the potential to guide personalized trigger avoidance strategies and will better inform research about the factors that underlie asthma symptoms/exacerbation in daily life. We have assembled a unique and closely knit multidisciplinary team of engineers, physicians, and health psychologists. We will also be guided by and work closely with a strong External Advisory Committee and program staff at the NIBIB at all stages of the project.
We propose to develop a wearable asthma trigger monitoring system with integrated physiological monitor. A strong team consisting of experienced engineers, clinicians and scientists along with an external advisory board has been assembled. It is believed that this system will provide patients with objective information about their momentary trigger exposure with the potential to guide personalized trigger avoidance strategies.
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