Home monitoring in asthma: towards digital twins

Abstract

Purpose of reviewWe highlight the recent advances in home monitoring of patients with asthma, and show that these advances converge towards the implementation of digital twin systems. Recent findingsConnected devices for asthma are increasingly numerous, reliable and effective: new electronic monitoring devices extend to nebulizers and spacers, are able to assess the quality of the inhalation technique, and to identify asthma attack triggers when they include a geolocation function; environmental data can be acquired from databases and refined by wearable air quality sensors; smartwatches are better validated. Connected devices are increasingly integrated into global monitoring systems. At the same time, machine learning techniques open up the possibility of using the large amount of data collected to obtain a holistic assessment of asthma patients, and social robots and virtual assistants can help patients in the daily management of their asthma.

Objectives for algorithmic decision-making systems in childhood asthma: Perspectives of children, parents, and physicians

“… 8 Managing these children through a system that combines continuous data collection and ADMS for real-time treatment adaptation could change the daily lives of these children. 9 In a survey conducted in France, 93% of children and 69% of parents were willing to use such a system if it could reduce the risk of asthma attacks by 30%. 10 …”

“… 12 Additionally, environmental databases can collect information on potential triggers of asthma attacks such as weather conditions, pollutants, and pollens. 9 …”