G-Asthma: A smart phone-based asthma management system for taiwanese

Asthma is one of the most common chronic diseases. In recent years, the chronic lower respiratory disease including asthma has become one of the top ten causes of death in Taiwan. Thus the government and people have to pay more attention to the relevant issues. Internationally, the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) has recommended guidelines for asthma diagnosis and patient management. Using mobile technology to assist patients in following these guidelines will be helpful for asthma management. In this study, we designed a smart-phone-based asthma monitoring system. This system can help users to calculate and record their lung capacity value via smart phones. By regular records of lung capacity value, users can view the trend of their lung capacity in smart phones. Then the system program can automatically remind the risk and stability about their lung capacity. Additionally, we developed Asthma Control Test (ACT) assessment of asthma according to GINA and Taiwan Association of Asthma Education to help users assessing their conditions. Another function of this system is providing the severity of allergy index in different regions based on the asthma index defined by the Taiwan Association of Asthma Education. It was expected to reduce the bronchial asthma symptoms caused by environmental factors. In the system evaluation, we surveyed 30 users for the acceptance of this system. The results revealed that 83% of the users are willing to use this system. Users felt that mobile technology can effectively manage their personal health and can help people to control their disease.