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Tracking tool predicts asthma control deterioration in children 1 week ahead

A model developed by researchers at University of Utah predicted asthma control deterioration among children 1 week prior to occurrence.

An estimated 7.1 million American children have pediatric asthma, translating to $9.3 billion in annual total direct health care costs. Suboptimal asthma control in children leads to frequent asthma exacerbations, which increase health care costs and negatively affect quality of life, according to study background.

“Successful prediction of risk for asthma control deterioration at the individual patient level would enhance self-management and enable early interventions to reduce asthma exacerbations,” Gang Luo, PhD, of the department of biomedical informatics at University of Utah, and colleagues wrote.

Researchers developed the Asthma Symptom Tracker, a weekly asthma self-monitoring tool, and used it to perform 2,912 weekly asthma control assessments on 210 children. They used the asthma control data set and accounted for environmental variables plus patient attributes to develop machine learning models intended to predict asthma control deterioration in children 1 week prior to occurrence.

The best model demonstrated 71.8% accuracy, 73.8% sensitivity and 71.4% specificity. Researchers calculated an area under the receiver operative characteristic curve of 0.757.

Luo and colleagues indicated they “identified potential improvements” to their models that may be used to “stimulate future research” on the topic.

“With improvements in accuracy, the models can be integrated into electronic asthma self-monitoring systems to provide real-time decision support and personalized early warnings on potential asthma control deterioration for asthmatic children,” Luo and colleagues wrote. “This will allow implementing preventive actions to reduce asthma exacerbations, improve clinical outcomes, increase quality of life and reduce healthcare cost.”– by Jeff Craven

Disclosure: The researchers report a patent application pending for the electronic-Asthma Tracker.