While few mobile health companies or services are specifically named within the FCC's 360-page National Broadband Plan, which it published this morning, one "newly released" smartphone application received high praise from the agency as a "glimpse" of the potential equipping consumers with health data can have on health outcomes.
According to AsthmaMD's website, medical doctor and researcher Sam Pejham, a clinical faculty member at UCSF Medical School and Director of Tri-Valley Pediatrics, created the free iPhone app, which launched earlier this year. Users can also opt-in to share their data with doctors and researchers anonymously so that the medical community may better understand the disease. Here's the FCC's take on AsthmaMD:
AsthmaMD: A Case Study in the Power of Consumer Health Data
A newly released smartphone application offers a glimpse of the potential when consumers enter even a small amount of data. AsthmaMD helps patients manage their asthma by inputting a number of parameters, including current medications, and attack timing and severity. Users can opt to share their data anonymously with the service. The data are aggregated and analyzed with the aim of better understanding the disease, as well as providing specific personalized solutions for the consumer. For example, the application can help users better understand the effectiveness of different medications for asthma management and offer insights into specific triggers for that individual’s attacks (e.g., pollen, dust, exercise). The application also can track the consumer’s precise location and the timing of their asthma activity, which can be correlated with local pollutant count, adverse weather changes and different types of pollutants. In addition, it can alert users with higher risks of an attack in real time if it detects users with a similar asthma history reporting asthma issues. Ultimately it could send live Twitter streams showing geographic areas with asthma flare-ups in real time.
Visit the FCC's site for more from the healthcare chapter in the FCC's National Broadband Plan (PDF)
