Improved asthma management is made possible with a mobile app.

Important takeaways:

• Every day, the juli app asks users to rate their asthma, log inhaler usage, and other tasks.
• At 8 weeks, patients who utilized the complete version had better asthma control than those who used the reduced version.

According to a study published on medRxiv, patients with moderately or poorly managed asthma improved their asthma control after utilizing a mobile app for 8 weeks.

According to Joseph F. Hayes, MSc, PhD, cofounder of juli health and professor of psychiatry at University College London, and colleagues, the app is a low-risk, low-cost complement to care.

Furthermore, juli allows users to track elements that may affect their symptoms, such as tobacco smoke exposure. It connects to smart peak flow meters, allowing users to manually enter this data as well.

“The juli app helps people identify asthma triggers and respond appropriately,” Hayes added.

Hayes explained that the app provides patients with hyper-localized weather, pollen, and air pollution data and demonstrates how these triggers are connected with acute asthma symptoms in each user.

“It also shows how other triggers, such as exercise, mood, and stress, might affect symptoms and sleep quality,” he added.

Additional features include passively obtained smartphone and wearable sensor data, behavioral activation strategies, configurable medicine reminders, and encouragement for positive affect journaling.

“The app is highly personalizable, so patients can track things that might be specific to their asthma, such as pet dander or second-hand smoke exposure,” Hayes explained.

According to Hayes, the software also gamifies beneficial behavioral change to reduce asthma symptoms.

“Medication reminders are central to juli, and showing how adherence relates to symptom control is a key part of patient education that is shown on the user’s dashboard — and can be communicated to the health care provider,” Hayes explained.

When users use the app, they may choose which evidence-based treatments they want to utilize for their asthma self-management. The software is designed to be very accessible for patients with asthma and is available in Android and Apple formats worldwide, according to the researchers.