“Revolutionary Home Monitoring for Children with Asthma in South Limburg”

Together with the MosaKids children’s hospital Maastricht, Zuyderland is investigating whether this project will soon have a joint follow-up for all children with asthma in South Limburg. It is certain that the first children went home with great enthusiasm with their own asthma kits in hand.

The children’s lung team leaves on the website Zuyderland know: “Together with data analysts from Zuyderland, we hope to be able to recognize patterns in the run-up to asthma complaints, in order to be able to treat more adequately and possibly preventively. Nationally, this would really be a unique combination of digital monitoring and coaching for children with asthma and a nice addition to our current asthma care.”

Concept home monitoring popular

The concept of home monitoring is developing successfully in healthcare and fits perfectly in the context of IZA, where appropriate care and digitization are keywords, among other things. There are therefore more and more hospitals that issue home monitoring boxes for various conditions. For example, the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) and the National eHealth Living Lab have launched a HealthBox for patients with the metabolic syndrome. Concerning HealthBox has been designed in collaboration with patients and healthcare providers and concretely consists of a virtual coach and home measuring equipment.

Insert smartwatch

A trend is that smartwatches are increasingly being used for home monitoring. For example, an advanced smartwatch can help to get a reliable picture of how people with Parkinson’s disease are doing at home. Cardiac arrhythmias are also increasingly being monitored remotely via a smartwatch. And now Zuyderland is also using a smart watch to provide virtual support to children with asthma.

With the special Fitbit smartwatch, heart rate, activity and sleep can be monitored, among other things. In this way, this watch can support parents and children to recognize complaints themselves (even) better and thus act early. The smartwatch is part of a home monitoring program from Zuyderland, which also developed a special home measurement app together with developer Luscii.

State-of-the-art home monitoring

The app in question is combined with a spirometer, a device that children use to measure their lung function at home. All in all, a platform has emerged that offers continuous home monitoring during a stable asthma period, but also virtual coaching during an asthma attack. It also offers a lot of information about asthma and gives advice about what to do if you have complaints.

That is not a superfluous luxury, because asthma is very common in children. In concrete terms, this concerns five to ten percent of them, making it the most common chronic disease in children. Within Zuyderland, too, a considerable number of children come to the emergency department or emergency clinic every year because of an asthma attack, and many children are also being treated in hospital. The pediatric lung team believes it is important that all these patients are not hindered by their asthma and hopes that this study with high-quality home monitoring will help them with this.