Title:Electronic Monitoring of Adherence to Inhaled Medication in Asthma
Volume: 10
Issue: 1
Author(s): Sam Howard, Alexandra Lang, Mitesh Patel, Sarah Sharples and Dominick Shaw
Affiliation:
Keywords:
Asthma, adherence, electronic monitoring, inhaled medication, data.
Abstract: The main treatment of asthma is inhaled corticosteroids. However adherence to these medications in asthma is
often poor, with low adherence associated with excessive health care costs and an increased risk of emergency room visits
and mortality. Although various methods are used to indirectly assess adherence, all have significant limitations whether
used in clinical or research practice. The recent development of electronic monitoring devices (EMDs) for use with
inhalers presents an exciting opportunity to easily and accurately measure inhaler adherence. This article summarises the
current devices available; for each device features and limitations are considered, followed by a review of both the current
clinical literature and data on reliability and accuracy. An overall summary is also provided to aid comparison of
capabilities between devices and future issues pertaining to the use of EMDs are discussed, including barriers to adoption,
stakeholder involvement, novel methods of communicating adherence data, recording of data and cloud storage. Finally
key areas that still require investigation are highlighted.
