Mount Sinai and LifeMap Solutions Expand Asthma Health ResearchKit Study to UK and Ireland
The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and LifeMap Solutions, a company developing innovative digital health solutions, today announced international expansion of the free Asthma Health app to the United Kingdom and Ireland. Released in March 2015 alongside the launch of Apple’s ResearchKit platform in the United States, Asthma Health enables individuals with asthma to participate in a large-scale medical research study by simply using iPhone.
The Asthma Health app is designed to facilitate asthma patient education and self-monitoring, promote positive behavioral changes, and reinforce adherence to treatment plans according to current asthma guidelines. The study tracks symptom patterns in an individual and potential triggers for these exacerbations so that researchers can learn new ways to personalize asthma treatment.
“We are excited to expand our successful Asthma Health research app to the United Kingdom and Ireland using Apple’s ResearchKit framework,” said Eric Schadt, PhD, the Jean C. and James W. Crystal Professor of Genomics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Founding Director of the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology. “Over the past year in the United States, we recruited and enrolled over 8,600 research participants in our study in one of the largest real-world epidemiological studies of asthma. Now we’re going global by adding the UK and Ireland to our clinical research platform, to collect an unprecedented breadth and depth of `real world’ health data and create a more holistic view of individuals and the disease on a population level.”
ResearchKit is a software framework designed by Apple that helps doctors and scientists gather data more frequently and more accurately from participants using iPhone apps. When granted permission by the user, the Asthma Health app can access health data from HealthKit to track exercise activity levels such as walking and running distance, take advantage of the GPS sensors built into iPhone to provide local air quality readings, and monitor asthma inhaler use as measured by third-party devices.
“To date, our Asthma Health study in the USA has demonstrated the feasibility of reliably consenting participants and collecting rich data across a large, diverse population in a cost-effective and accelerated manner by digitizing and automating the research processes that are traditionally labor intensive and time consuming,” said Yu-Feng Yvonne Chan, MD, PhD, Director of Digital Health and Personalized Medicine at the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology at Mount Sinai. “With the UK and Ireland launch, we will conduct a randomized controlled trial, specifically A/B testing a new app feature to assess its impact on engagement and the retention of recruited participants over time.”
“As we expand internationally with our Asthma Health app, we’re continuing to enhance it, making it even more effective and engaging for all users,” stated Corey Bridges, CEO of LifeMap Solutions. “This new version of Asthma Health introduces enhanced air-quality readings from BreezoMeter, with an intuitive map of real-time data to help users and providers identify environmental triggers. And we’re working closely with clinical experts at Mount Sinai to develop new features that increase user knowledge and enhance doctor/patient visits. In addition to the features we recently announced, such as Doctor Dashboard and electronic medical record integration, we’re always honing our ‘gamification’ features to provide positive feedback and rewards to participants for daily usage in order to increase long-term retention and bolster powerful data collection.”
The Asthma Health app is available for free download in the App Store here; for more information visit http://icahn.mssm.edu/asthmaapp.
About the Mount Sinai Health System
Mount Sinai Health System is one of the largest academic medical systems in the New York metro area, with more than 43,000 employees working across eight hospitals, over 400 outpatient practices, nearly 300 labs, a school of nursing, and a leading school of medicine and graduate education. Mount Sinai advances health for all people, everywhere, by taking on the most complex health care challenges of our time — discovering and applying new scientific learning and knowledge; developing safer, more effective treatments; educating the next generation of medical leaders and innovators; and supporting local communities by delivering high-quality care to all who need it.
Through the integration of its hospitals, labs, and schools, Mount Sinai offers comprehensive health care solutions from birth through geriatrics, leveraging innovative approaches such as artificial intelligence and informatics while keeping patients’ medical and emotional needs at the center of all treatment. The Health System includes approximately 7,300 primary and specialty care physicians; 13 joint-venture outpatient surgery centers throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida; and more than 30 affiliated community health centers. We are consistently ranked by U.S. News & World Report's Best Hospitals, receiving high "Honor Roll" status, and are highly ranked: No. 1 in Geriatrics and top 20 in Cardiology/Heart Surgery, Diabetes/Endocrinology, Gastroenterology/GI Surgery, Neurology/Neurosurgery, Orthopedics, Pulmonology/Lung Surgery, Rehabilitation, and Urology. New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai is ranked No. 12 in Ophthalmology. U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Children’s Hospitals” ranks Mount Sinai Kravis Children's Hospital among the country’s best in several pediatric specialties.
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