Asthmapolis Developed Spiroscout Tracks Your Asthma to Determine Potential Triggers; Reminds You to Use Your Inhaler
Asthma is a serious issue for anyone who is affected by it, but it can be difficult to manage and even more difficult for doctors to monitor. The people at Asthmapolis are trying to change that with the introduction of the GPS-enabled Spiroscout and the associated Asthmapolis community.
The Spiroscout device uses GPS to determine the time and location that you use your inhaler. The information is then stored and sent to a remote server through a USB port. The same port can be used to charge the device with a battery that lasts 2+ days.
The small, lightweight device attaches easily to almost any inhaler and is simple to transfer to a new canister. There are also lights on the device that let you know when it detects a use as well as how much battery life is left.
While logging your inhaler use is all well and good, the real value of this device is how you can interact on the Asthmapolis website.
On the site you can create your own Asthmapolis mobile diary where you can map and track asthma symptoms, triggers, and your use of rescue and controller medications. This can be done from any phone with a web browser. You can even set it up to get text message notifications to remind you to use controller medication.
The website collects your information over time and helps you to understand your patterns of use to include trends over time that can help you identify locations that cause your asthma to get worse. By attaching this information to maps you can avoid those areas that tend to irritate your asthma.
Having personally seen the effects that asthma can have on an individual’s life it is great to see anything that can make managing it easier. Like most things with our personal health, the more you know the better you can handle the situation, and the Asthmapolis community should provide some much needed information.
That’s really cool. I wonder if there’s some way to be able to export the data that’s collected for your doctor to see or possibly a way for your doctor to log in and monitor your progress. Of course, many doctors won’t go to that effort, but a way to get that information to them at your visit would be important. I imagine they have some way to do it.
There was not a ton of information on their website as they are not fully released, but they did specifically mention doctors being able to monitor their patients more effectively. They didn’t specify how exactly that would take place, but it seems like it would be pretty easy to implement, and extremely useful if they actually used it.