Why?
One of the biggest challenges for the patients is already the need to learn and remember different techniques with different inhalers. To expect technical competence with a number of different apps on top of it is unreasonable and unrealistic – and therefore bad for business.
Another big challenge was highlighted by Professor John Blakey of Royal Liverpool Hospital during the RDD session when he noted that “clinicians are a major obstacle,” presumably because they fear that they would have to deal with overwhelming amounts of data from digital technology.
We need to find ways to deliver high quality respiratory medicine without increasing the costs or the burden on the healthcare professionals by removing unnecessary and time consuming tasks if we wish to slow down or reduce healthcare expenditure and make access to healthier breathing affordable to all.
Future medicine needs to be preventive, predictive, precise, personalized – and participatory. That last attribute is essential – we the people have the power to contribute to the global health information and in the end we will all benefit from it.
Your doctor will be able to advise you much better if a wealth of information about you and people similar to you is processed offline on your initiative and is then available to them in a concise and interactive form. That is saving their time, not adding to it.
In respiratory medicine, numerous companies have been introducing connected devices that each produce individual data streams. Nebulizers with electronic compliance monitoring and optimum delivery control have been available from companies like Vectura and Phillips for some time.
Most of the major device manufacturers, including 3M Drug Delivery Systems, Aptar, and H&T Presspart have introduced electronic inhalers – several with the ability to provide helpful feedback. Device and pharma companies are partnering with various tech companies like Adherium, Propeller Health, and Cohero Health, each of which has its own inhaler monitoring platform.
To simplify the use of connected inhalers for both patients and clinicians, we should strive to achieve the seemingly inconceivable in the drug world — a single app that will be able to handle all electronic inhalers. Hopefully the same app can also deal with other health information collected by patients or at least communicate seamlessly with other apps.
Apple’s Health App appears now to lead this type of integration – at the latest count, almost 50 healthcare organizations were participating in its use. Will an Apple (app) a day keep the doctor away?
