According to the World Health Organization, asthma is the most prevalent chronic childhood disease worldwide. That’s why researchers are working on developing technology that could predict when a child will have an asthma attack and provide prevention and treatment suggestions, according to an article in Chemical and Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly news magazine of the American Chemical Society.
For asthma treatments to be more effective, there needs to be a shift to individually tailored care, some experts say. To help make this possible, researchers are using smart phones, watches and various sensors to gather data from children with asthma, Senior Editor Britt Erickson writes. The devices track geographical location, physical activity, air quality and health data, which are wirelessly transmitted to the user’s smart device in real time. To encourage the children to self-report daily activities and symptoms, the researchers created an animated dragon that asks the children questions. The dragon appears happy when questions are answered, and he becomes hungry when he needs to be fed more answers.
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