Aseptika (Activ8rlives) has been named winner of the Best Patient-Focused Technological Development in the 2019 CARE Awards, which recognises outstanding work across global clinical research. The Aseptika technology-enabled winning solution is Asthma+me, a self-care system supporting children aged 6-12 years that have asthma rated as “moderate-to-severe” and are treated in specialist paediatric clinics.
The 2019 winners were announced at a ceremony on the 2nd May at the Hyatt Regency Boston, USA. The organisers of the CARE Awards said this about the Asthma+me win:
“This is an innovative concept targeting the paediatric population, which is often underrepresented in the development of tech solutions. The potential benefit to empower children to self-manage their asthma is enormous. This impressive technology provides a great solution to help improve medication adherence in the paediatric population”.
In the UK there are 1.1 million children that have asthma and 110,000 have to be treated by paediatricians at specialist clinics. The UK has one of the highest rates of childhood asthma.
Medication adherence, learning about self-management and what to do in the event of an asthma attack, are key elements of the Asthma+me solution. Parents have the ability to immediately share their child’s data from their Smartphones with paediatricians, to get immediate medical advice.
Asthma+me has been co-designed with Professor Heather Elphick, Consultant Paediatrician at Sheffield Children’s Hospital NHS Trust (UK) to support the transition from treatment in specialist paediatric clinics to community care, with an initial focus of meeting the needs of children aged 6-12 years. It supports wireless medical monitors and includes medication diaries, trigger alerts for pollution, pollen and weather and recording of symptoms.
Asthma+me is used with the PUFFClickerTM – a Bluetooth tracker for pressurised metered-dose inhalers, which counts doses, whether the inhaler has been shaken properly before each use and a timer to support improved inhaler technique.
Children are involved in setting their goals and are motivated by incentives from parents, friends and family to promote behaviour change, increasing adherence to their Personalised Care Plan that is generated automatically on their Smartphone.
Dr Kevin Auton, Managing Director of Aseptika commenting on the award said: “We are delighted to have received this accolade from the 2019 Care Awards run by Informa and we are sorry we couldn’t join you at this year’s event but we are deeply commitment to a Randomised Controlled Trial taking place with children who have moderate-to-severe asthma alongside our clinical partner, Sheffield Children’s Hospital (NHS, UK) supported by Innovate UK.
Our Asthma+me solution increases knowledge and confidence of families with children that have moderate-to-severe asthma to self-manage. Improving skills, building expertise and having tools to forewarn of an asthma attack, all leading to better health outcomes, fewer hospital admissions and outpatient clinics means more time for children to attend school.
This award recognises the high levels of effort and creativity from the co-development teams at Sheffield Children’s Hospital and Aseptika in this development, so as to better support children around the world.”
You can view the full list of winners here: https://pharmaintelligence.informa.com/events/awards/care-awards-2019/winners-2019