Asthma is a scary disease for adults and children alike. There is always the fear that an asthma attack could cause them to not be able to breathe altogether. This underlying fear is needing emergency care, hospitalization, or worse. Fortunately, technology continues to improve people’s lives, including those with asthma. There are many different ways that technology can help. From improving air quality to tracking location, and even tracking the number of asthma attacks that required an emergency inhaler.
Here are the technological advances that allergy sufferers should consider:
Wearable Devices
The technology behind wearables has come a long way. Now they can monitor everything from blood sugars to heart rates and then send the data to your physician. This is incredible. For people with asthma, wearables can help monitor blood oxygen levels, heart rate, and more. These devices help them to see in real-time what’s happening in their body right before, during, and after an asthma attack. Additionally, this data can be saved and any patterns can be easily identified. Additionally, wearables can contain tracking devices which are great for parents of children with asthma. It can alleviate the fear of them being somewhere, needing help, and not having anyone around.
This data can be helpful in determining the VA Disability rating for asthma and other critical information when people are seeking disability claims for their asthma. Since it’s hard to measure in a scheduled appointment, this data over time can give the patient more information to share with doctors that can help move their disability claims along.
Smart Inhalers
What if an inhaler could gather data from the surrounding environment each time you used it? What if it was smart enough to know what was in the air? This data could track patterns that could help allergy sufferers to identify their unique triggers. If there was always a certain allergen or type of smoke in the air when an asthma attack came on, then it would become easier to watch out for these things in the future to prevent attacks. These are just some of the benefits of using a smart inhaler. As data is collected it can be saved and analyzed to help people with asthma better manage their disease. And can be used by doctors to make treatment plans to help.
Air Filters and Purifiers
People with asthma often get triggered by particles in the air that cause constriction in their airways. The particles can be from artificial fragrances, dust, mites, pollen, and other allergens. The good news is that advanced filtration technology allows more homes to have cleaner air. Using the right HEPA air filters on HVAC systems and in-room air purifiers helps tremendously when allergy sufferers are at home. While they cannot remove everything, they do remove enough to limit the number of attacks at home.
Advanced Immunotherapy
One of the issues with asthma patients is that they often have allergies that go with it. With doctor-led immunotherapy, micro amounts of allergens are injected into the patient. Over time, this amount is increased with the goal of reducing the impact of these allergens on the body. This advancement in technology is changing the way that asthmatics live their life. Over time, some of them experience no reactions to the allergen anymore.
Telemedicine and Remote Devices
The beauty of technology is that patients can meet with doctors from anywhere. This improves the quality of care for many allergy patients especially if they live in more remote areas. With the improvements in mail-order medications, this becomes even more possible because people can get almost any medication shipped directly to their homes. By leveraging wearable technology that sends information to the doctor’s office, along with telemedicine technology, it’s possible to get treatment without visiting the office all the time.
Final Thoughts
Between the advancements in wearable technology, better filtration systems for homes and buildings, and even using smart inhalers, asthma patients are getting better medical care than ever before. The outcomes for the care are improving as well thanks in part to telemedicine and even immunotherapy for the worst asthma cases. As technology continues to advance adults, parents, and children will no longer need to live in fear of a major asthma attack causing serious harm or death.
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