Asthma is a chronic disease which affects more than 300 million people worldwide. Around 5% of Singapore’s adult population and 20% of Singapore’s child population is affected by asthma. As it is a chronic disease, it requires constant monitoring of the stipulated dosage of medicine in the inhaler in order to prevent an asthmatic attack. Moreover, many patients are not aware of the correct technique to use the inhaler.

A study conducted by The Commonwealth Fund described an 8-level pyramid to describe various strategies medical applications that can be adopted in order to increase engagement with their users. Based on the Pyramid, if level 1 is 'Providing educational information' and level 8 is 'Supporting behaviour change through rewards', most existing asthma applications in the market adopt strategies up to level 4 ('Displaying and summarising health information') in the best-case scenario. Existing mobile applications such as AsthmaMD, asthmaTrack and DailyBreath display asthmatic symptoms based on different weather conditions, but are unable to provide a medium of communication between the clinician and the patient.

The proposed application aims to use the existing applications as a reference and build on them further, by aiming to adopt strategies up to level 6 in the pyramid: Enabling communication with clinicians, family members and caregivers, contrary to level 4 adopted by existing applications. Moreover, on consulting various medical professionals, it was found that most patients are unaware of the correct technique to use their inhalers, and thus, invariably end up with inadequate dosage of medicine for their treatment. The proposed application also aims to address the above problem, which previous applications in the market have not covered.

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The development process of the application was divided into two parts: designing and developing the various functionalities of the application and authenticating the application to ensure a user can create his/her account and access the application. The main functionalities are:

1. Home: The ‘Home’ page is the page which facilitates communication between the user and the specialist. The patient can book new appointments with his/her specialist through the application as well as view the dosage of medication the specialist has prescribed for the patient. The patient can also drop in the specialist a message in case he/she has any queries or concerns. The page also shows other different types of specialists in the area of the patient in case the patient wants an appointment with a different doctor.

2. My Reminders: The ‘My Reminders’ portion of the application is a page designed for the users to ensure that they take their medication on time. The user can create any number of reminders using different medication types: such as pills, inhalers and so on. The user can also select the time at which the reminder should be set and the interval for which the user should be periodically reminded to take the medication. Once the reminders are set, there will be both a message notification as well as a sound notification (alarm) to remind the user when it is time to take the medicine. The reminders are permanently set until they are deleted by the user. Any number of reminders can be created.

3. Asthma Control Test: The ‘Asthma Control Test’ Page is an imperative component of the application. The Asthma Control Test (ACT) is a validated, 5-item, patient-completed measure of asthma control with a recall period of four weeks. The ACT score is predictive of Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) guideline-defined classification levels of asthma control. There are two versions of the test- the first one for children ages 4 to 11, and the second for people ages 12 and above. A score is calculated and a score less than 19 is indicative of poor asthmatic control while a score of 20 or above is indicative of good asthmatic control. The test is important for every user to take in order to understand where their symptoms stand so that they can take further action to treat their asthma.
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Click here to view the interactive figma prototype!