My experience at the ERS Congress
Io Hui, 3rd Year PhD Student based at the University of Edinburgh
The 27th International Congress of the European Respiratory Society, the largest respiratory meeting in the world, was held in Milan in September. The 5 day programme included workshops, postgraduate courses and talks about chronic airway disease, interstitial lung disease and vascular and vascular disease, acute and chronic respiratory failure/sleep, lung cancer, respiratory infections, exercise, rehabilitation and physiology, and smoking prevention and cessation. Talks about digital health, innovation in diagnosing and monitoring disease discussed ehealth from GP and patient’s perspectives. They were excellent and provided future directions to develop telemedicine for respiratory conditions such as COPD and asthma. Booths from industries demonstrated their latest technologies, mostly for secondary care application, patient monitoring and sleep therapy. The giant men in the middle of the hall were interesting - they were built from the cubes that stored visitor’s thoughts about respiratory conditions.
It was my privilege to present my findings in the congress. The topic was “What features do patients ‘want’ in a mobile asthma app?: a qualitative study”. I identified a number of different factors to inform future app development. One size does not fit all and ‘wanted’ features varied. Flexible apps may meet the needs of a broader range of patients. In the presentation, I found that some technology companies were very interested to know the ‘wanted’ features whereas clinical researches were interested in the method that I used in this research. They have different interests in my research findings but they were both looking for the best ways to develop quality ehealth solutions to people with asthma. I am looking forward to working with them and develop better solutions for people with asthma. Also looking forward for the ERS International Congress 2018 in Paris.
Find out more about our App for Asthma(A4A)
Want to receive our latest findings or want to talk with me about asthma app? Email io.hui@ed.ac.uk
