Study Links Air Pollution with Rescue Inhaler Use

This study is unique in that it looked at how air pollution impacts someone’s day-to-day life, in terms of their symptoms,” said Meredith Barrett, vice president of research at Propeller Health, in an interview with MD+DI. She said past studies have had to rely on mortality or hospitalization data to understand how air pollution affects asthma, which represents more rare and severe exacerbation events. “By using this medication-use data, we’re able to look at the daily burden of disease,” she said. Data was gathered by fitting small sensors onto inhaled medication devices of some 2800 people across the United States. The sensors collected information on when and how frequently (by measuring the number of puffs) people were using their medicine. The sensors were paired with the patient’s smartphones, which provided a GPS location. This data was merged with environmental information such as temperature, humidity, and precipitation, as well as air pollution data, all of which were collected from government sources. “From that data, we’re able to understand the conditions in which symptoms may occur,” Barrett said. Propeller has developed models that will look at a person’s past record of medication use. As more and more data is collected on each individual, the models learn what...
Source: MDDI - Category: Medical Devices Authors: Tags: Digital Health Source Type: news