AMC Health’s telemonitoring platform is going to be used in a research study to monitor patients that need to improve their asthma control. The goal is to see whether asthma patients are using their medications and be able to intervene as soon as possible if a problem develops.
The study is being funded by a SBIR grant from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute awarded to Asthma Management Systems LLC, a Delaware-based company that works on developing and testing innovative approaches to improve asthma care.
The study will enroll patients who have had multiple emergency room visits and hospitalizations due to uncontrolled asthma. AMC Health will provide Smartinhalers™ for half of the patients in the study. The telemonitors will clip onto the inhalers that will dispense two types of medications that most people with severe asthma take such as a controller taken every day and a rescue medication for short-term relief when breathing becomes difficult.
Andrew Weinstein M.D, CEO of Asthma Management Systems and principal investigator for the study, explained that patients should take controller medication every day even if they are not experiencing asthma symptoms because failure to follow this schedule often leads to an asthma attack.
Dr. Weinstein will also monitor patients that use the rescue medication. If a patient uses the rescue inhaler frequently, the physician will be alerted that the patient’s asthma is not well controlled. The study team will use a counseling technique known as motivational interviewing to help patients manage their asthma better.
“With the AMC Health telemonitoring platform,” Dr. Weinstein noted, “The study team will know immediately if a patient doesn’t take the controller medication as prescribed or is using the rescue inhaler too often. This will enable the team to help stabilize the patient before a full blown asthma attack forces them to go to the emergency room.”
Michael O’Brien, President of AMC Health’s Clinical Trials Division, said, “This grant provides an important opportunity to demonstrate the value of this new methodology and we are proud to play a key role in this ground-breaking research.”
For more information, email info@amchealth.com or call 212-422-3037.