High prevalence, chronicity and interference with patients’ quality of life – asthma is a disease with great personal and socio-economic impact. In Portugal, an estimated 20,000 people suffer from severe asthma, a condition characterised by difficulty in controlling symptoms even with high doses of treatment. There is a gap in credible and available information for both patients and doctors to make informed decisions and sharing information about severe asthma. In the “Attack Asthma Together” project, NOVA IMS and Sanofi Genzyme, in collaboration with the main promoters of respiratory health in Portugal, organized a Hackathon – Asthma Hack Innovation – challenging participants to propose innovative and differentiating solutions to help severe asthma patients and their doctors.
Throughout the three weeks of the initiative, from June to July 2021, the 37 participants, distributed by six teams, worked on the solutions. In the end, two ideas conquered the jury – Asthmeter and Puure. Asthmeter, on the one hand, proposes an integrated solution for asthma control – both for the patient’s difficulties – symptoms recognition, doubts or inhalation technique – and for the physician’s difficulties – symptoms surveillance, adherence monitoring and action plan. Puure, on the other hand, is a daily asthma control application, to mediate the patient-doctor relationship working as a source of preventive notifications, allowing frequent self-assessment of how the patient feels that day.