Newswise — NEW YORK – February 23, 2016 – 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://www.icahn.mssm.edu/asthmaapp.
About the Mount Sinai Health SystemThe Mount Sinai Health System is an integrated health system committed to providing distinguished care, conducting transformative research, and advancing biomedical education. Structured around seven hospital campuses and a single medical school, the Health System has an extensive ambulatory network and a range of inpatient and outpatient services — from community-based facilities to tertiary and quaternary care.The System includes approximately 6,100 primary and specialty care physicians; 12 minority-owned free-standing ambulatory surgery centers; more than 140 ambulatory practices throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida; and 31 affiliated community health centers. Physicians are affiliated with the renowned Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, which is ranked among the highest in the nation in National Institutes of Health funding per investigator. The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked as one of the nation’s top 10 hospitals in Geriatrics, Cardiology/Heart Surgery, and Gastroenterology, and is in the top 25 in five other specialties in the 2015-2016 “Best Hospitals” issue of U.S. News & World Report. Mount Sinai’s Kravis Children’s Hospital also is ranked in seven out of ten pediatric specialties by U.S. News & World Report. The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai is ranked 11th nationally for Ophthalmology, while Mount Sinai Beth Israel is ranked regionally.
For more information, visit http://www.mountsinaihealth.org/ or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. About LifeMap Solutions, Inc.LifeMap Solutions is developing innovative digital health solutions in partnership with the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology, which is located within the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. LifeMap Solutions integrates health and wellness information with care team guidance into a secure mHealth platform to deliver digital health solutions that empower patients to make better choices to achieve optimal health outcomes. LifeMap Solutions is a subsidiary of BioTime, Inc. LifeMap Solutions is headquartered in San Jose, California. For more information, please visit http://www.lifemap-solutions.com.
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