HIPAA compliant wireless sensing smartwatch application for the self-management of pediatric asthma

Abstract

Asthma is the most prevalent chronic disease among pediatrics, as it is the leading cause of student absenteeism and hospitalization for those under the age of 15. To address the significant need to manage this disease in children, the authors present a mobile health (mHealth) system that determines the risk of an asthma attack through physiological and environmental wireless sensors and representational state transfer application program interfaces (RESTful APIs). The data is sent from wireless sensors to a smartwatch application (app) via a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliant cryptography framework, which then sends data to a cloud for real-time analytics. The asthma risk is then sent to the smartwatch and provided to the user via simple graphics for easy interpretation by children. After testing the safety and feasibility of the system in an adult with moderate asthma prior to testing in children, it was found that the analytics model is able to determine the overall asthma risk (high, medium, or low risk) with an accuracy of 80.10±14.13%. Furthermore, the features most important for assessing the risk of an asthma attack were multifaceted, highlighting the importance of continuously monitoring different wireless sensors and RESTful APIs. Future testing this asthma attack risk prediction system in pediatric asthma individuals may lead to an effective self-management asthma program.

Wireless Sensor-Dependent Ecological Momentary Assessment for Pediatric Asthma mHealth Applications

“…A high heart rate will lead to a higher risk levels of an asthma attack, as previously observed in Hosseini et al 8 . Note that an elevated heart rate can be triggered by behavioral factors other than exercise, such as stress.…”

“…The BREATHE application described in Hosseini et al 8 and expanded upon here is a wireless sensor system for pediatric asthma. Specifically, the original system consists of a smart watch, spirometer, and environmental sensors for continuous monitoring of potential asthma triggers for a child (Fig.…”

“…The smart watch application utilized in this study, the Biomedical REAl-Time Health Evaluation (BREATHE) platform 8 , is designed to monitor activities and behaviors of children who suffer from asthma. The long term goal is to reduce asthma attacks while the patient is in the field through continuous monitoring and appropriate AAPs.…”

“…The long term goal is to reduce asthma attacks while the patient is in the field through continuous monitoring and appropriate AAPs. By expanding upon our preliminary work to determine the overall risk of an asthma attack 8 , this study investigates new strategies for obtaining a higher level of patient care through intelligent asthma monitoring of physiological, environmental, and psychosocial behaviors. The application presented here describes a new implementation of EMA using sensor and smart watch based triggers as well as new strategies for disseminating and visualizing collected information.…”

Temperature and humidity calibration of a low-cost wireless dust sensor for real-time monitoring

“…Wireless air quality sensors are widely used to measure airborne particles in the environment, and have become increasingly important in various remote health monitoring applications [1, 2]. Their ability to measure dust density, particulate matter 2.5 to 10 micrometers in diameter, ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrous oxide, has allowed for finer air pollution monitoring than online current application programming interface (API) sources such as AirNow.gov.…”