Towards mHealth Solutions for Asthma Patients

With the recent, rapid growth in mobile-computing technology, mobile health (mHealth) is becoming a popular research topic. mHealth is one of several examples of how using technology in the health sector is being more advanced every day. mHealth is being applied to the care of a broad spectrum of diseases from acute to chronic, such as the flu, asthma, and cancer. Due to the easy-to-understand and friendly user interfaces, mobility and cost effectiveness; a mobile application can be a powerful tool to collect patient information. Asthma is a common disease around the globe. Collecting the proper symptom, trigger, peak-flow and inhaler-consumption information is crucial for assessing the patient’s severity of disease and tailoring treatment for people who suffer from asthma. Collecting and preserving this information on daily basis can help doctors provide a better treatment plan. Also, this information gives the patient an indication about if he/she needs immediate treatment. Collecting this information by using a traditional medium, such as pen and paper often results in lost data or inability to make the date interoperable with the health providers. A mobile application can address these issues as most people carry smartphones. This thesis works towards a solution for a patient centered asthma data collection tool using mHealth. The necessity of a mobile application for asthma patients’ data collection is analyzed in the thesis. Application features, scopes and data representation methods are determined by talking with experts. A state-of-the-art mobile app is designed and implemented. The features of this application are evaluated. The application is capable of serving all the important aspects of data collection for an asthma patient. Finally, the future improvements are analyzed along with the conclusion