Interaction Design of Asthma Inhaler Assistant Device

Abstract

Asthma is an allergic disease that more than 300 million people worldwide suffer from. Recurrent attacks of breathlessness and wheezing are main symptoms of asthma and inhalers are used for the treatment. Surprisingly, 84 percent of patients are using the inhaler incorrectly and 53.7 percent of medical doctors confess the difficulty in educating the inhaler usage due to a lack of time and manpower. It is important for patients of chronic diseases such as asthma to form proper inhaler usage habit from the very beginning when they are in the early stage of the disease. However, they have to rely only on doctors whom they do not meet every day. Otherwise, they can read or watch instruction materials, but it cannot correct their behavior of use in person. Our asthma inhaler assistant device is a working prototype with a purpose of aiding asthma patients in three critical steps: keep the inhaler horizontally, inhale deeply enough, and hold the breath for 10 s. We designed an interactive audio-visual real-time feedback system using LED and sound to deliver not only informative, but also motivational aid to the users of asthma inhalers. Finally, we validated our working prototype with actual patients or people suffering from similar diseases. The results indicate that it has the effect of actually correcting participants’ usage behavior judging from the peak inspiratory flow rate and breath-holding time.