Integrated Patient Management System for the Improved Treatment of Asthma and Oth

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Asthma is increasingly common and expensive. Current estimates place the number of people in the US with asthma at over 25M. Asthma accounts for one-quarter of all emergency room visits in the US. Direct treatment and indirect patient costs rose from 53B in 2002 to 56B in 2007 in the US. Globally, 300M people are estimated to have asthma with prevalence increasing 50% per decade and estimated costs over 100B per year. Proven effective treatments exist to control asthma but the disease is under-diagnosed, undertreated and adherence to medication is poor. Specialty care for asthma leads to improved outcomes and lower costs but there are too few asthma specialists to manage all asthmatics. Accurate assessment of asthma requires specific information about symptoms, medication use and objective lung function measurements (spirometry). Together these components provide the necessary information to evaluate asthma severity and asthma control as recommended by N