Thanks to the “My Air, My Health” Challenge, a collaboration with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), asthma sufferers and clinicians will soon be able to evaluate patient “air space” in real time. The contest called on inventors to find a cost-effective, portable way for asthmatics to monitor air quality.
Conscious Clothing claimed the Challenge’s grand prize of $100,000. Their innovative, lightweight and user-friendly air pollution detector analyzes the wearer’s inhalation of airborne particles and the corresponding physiological response.
According to the Summary Health Statistics for U.S. Adults: National Health Interview Survey, 2011, published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2012, over 18.9 million people in the United States suffer from asthma. Those who suffer are at the mercy of environmental pollutants on a minute-by-minute basis. The ability to effectively monitor asthma patients’ responses to environmental triggers may allow for the initiation of emergency service interventions and treatment protocols well before the patient’s condition becomes life threatening.
Late response to an asthma attack can result in delayed treatment with fatal results. Patients using this device may also be registered and linked with hospitals/local emergency services via the tool’s Bluetooth technology, which advises clinicians instantaneously of those at risk of acute respiratory failure (ARF) as it happens.
In a hospital setting, using such a tool in conjunction with cardiac telemetry and other noninvasive measures, nurses will be able to simultaneously monitor and analyze the respiration of multiple patients continuously and accurately. This can alert them to a deteriorating patient health status immediately, while providing valuable data for diagnosis and treatment.
“This is an exciting time in research,” says Linda Birnbaum, Ph.D., director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, part of NIH. She explains, “With people wearing these new data collecting devices, researchers will be able to see and understand the relationships between varying levels of air pollutants and individual health responses in real time. This is a big step toward treating and, more importantly, preventing disease and illness.”
Future implications for the device for asthmatics are far reaching and exciting for both clinicians and patients alike. Concerned with the impact of air quality on disease processes, the National Institutes of Health acknowledged Conscious Clothing’s invention for its capacity to change the face of respiratory monitoring within the hospital/emergency services, to encourage patient adherence to medication plans and to provide effective community monitoring and management for asthmatics at home.
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