ADAPT: Approach to Develop context-Aware solutions for Personalised asthma managemenT

The creation of sensors allowing the collection of a high amount of data has been possible thanks to the evolution of information and communication technology. These data must be properly interpreted to deliver meaningful information and services. Context-aware reasoning plays an important role in this task, and it is considered as a hot topic to study in the development of solutions that can be categorised under the scope of Intelligent Environments. This research work studies the use of context-aware reasoning as a tool to provide support in the asthma management process. The contribution of this study is presented as the Approach to Develop context-Aware solutions for Personalised asthma managemenT (ADAPT), which can be used as a guideline to create solutions supporting asthma management in a personalised way. ADAPT proposes context-aware reasoning as an appropriate tool to achieve the personalisation that is required to address the heterogeneity of asthma. This heterogeneity makes people with asthma have different triggers provoking their exacerbations and to experience different symptoms when their exacerbations occur, which is considered as the most challenging characteristic of the condition when it comes to implementing asthma treatments. ADAPT context dimensions are the main contribution of the research work as they directly address the heterogeneity of asthma management by allowing the development of preventive and reactive features that can be customised depending on the characteristics of a person with asthma. The approach also provides support to people not knowing their triggers properly through case-based reasoning, and includes virtual assistant as a complementing technology supporting asthma management. The comprehensive nature of ADAPT motivates the study of the interaction between context-aware reasoning and case-based reasoning in Intelligent Environments, which is also reported as a key contribution of the research work. The inclusion of people with asthma, carers and experts in respiratory conditions in the experiments of the research project was possible to achieve thanks to the collaboration formed with Asthma UK