Using Apple'€™s New Research Kit for the Asthma Mobile Health Study

Asthma is one of the most common and costly of the chronic diseases, impacting a broad range of the population including both children and adults. It is a variable disease necessitating regular medication use, monitoring of symptoms, and avoidance of specific triggers. These characteristics of asthma make it a chronic disease particularly amenable to having a Mobile Health Application (MHA) facilitate active monitoring outside of periodic traditional medical visits. The asthma MHA is designed to facilitate asthma patient education and self-monitoring, promote positive behavioral changes, and reinforce adherence to treatment plans. Our research study will assess the association between the usage of the app and asthma symptom control, quality of life, and health care utilization. To date, the app has been downloaded approximately 50K times and over 8,000 individuals have electronically consented and enrolled in our Asthma Health research study. In the talk, we will describe the launch of the Asthma Mobile Health App as well as preliminary findings and lessons learned to date. We will discuss the infrastructure, data management and data analysis we used. We will also discuss the benefits and limitations in conducting medical research with mobile devices, using Apple’s Research Kit and similar platforms as well as the promise of m-Health applications in improving clinical care.