Predicting asthma attacks in kids

Abstract

Millions of children have trouble controlling asthma attacks, leading to missed school days and scary trips to the emergency room. What if you could predict when a child will have an asthma attack and take steps to prevent it? That is what a multidisciplinary group of researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Southern California is hoping to do with the help of new wearable environmental sensors, smart devices, and mobile health technologies. Pediatric asthma is the most prevalent chronic childhood disease in the US, says Alex Bui, director of medical imaging informatics and director of the Los Angeles Pediatric Research Using Integrated Sensor Monitoring Systems (PRISMS) Center at UCLA. Many things can play a role in asthma attacks. “It’s not just air pollution,” Bui says. Other contributors include common allergens, individual susceptibility factors, and behavioral factors. “Even though we treat asthma as a single