To kick off our project, we dove into broad secondary research on childhood asthma in order to get an understanding of the problem space. We discuss:
- Asthma
- Self management
- Stakeholders
- Existing products and services
- Data we might find useful
As a team, we divided up different areas to research that we would then consolidate and narrow our scope. Below we’ll list some of the basic insights found.
Asthma
- Affects about 8% of the population
- Symptoms can develop or go away at any age
- Usually chronic condition in which a person’s airways become inflamed, narrow & swell, & produce extra mucus, making it difficult to breathe
- For some people, it’s a minor nuisance. For others, it can be a major problem that interferes with daily activities & can be life-threatening
- Often changes over time, so it’s crucial to track symptoms & adjust treatment as needed
Self management
- Children benefit from being empowered to manage their own asthma and make healthy choices as soon as they are developmentally ready
- Recognizing symptoms and knowing how to deal with them is critical to learn from an early age, even if kids don’t know the reasons behind their affliction
- Self carrying inhalers at an early age is encouraged once kids are ready for the responsibility
- Asthma Action Plans — plan that is given to adults so that they know how to recognize different seventies of asthma attacks and know how to react
- State regulations are different, and getting schools to comply with a child’s asthma needs can sometimes be difficult
Stakeholders
Existing products and services
- There are many government run and private services to teach children about asthma. For example, Open Airways for Schools and Lungtropolis
- There are a number of apps for mobile devices to help track asthma
- Some more interesting services we found were camps exclusively for children with asthma. We were particular interested in this sense of community and peer learning.
Data
- Air Quality & Pollution — We found that living in a place that has unclean air leads to more asthma attacks. Air quality data could be useful to analyze and warn children with asthma that they are more prone to attacks.
- Weather & Allergy — We also found that allergens like pollen and weather factors such as temperature and moisture can also have a big impact on asthma attacks. This data is also readily available for us to dig into.
