Leveraging Telemedicine and Smartphones to Deliver Asthma Care

Despite having established diagnostic and treatment guidelines as well as substantial medical advances over the past decades, including targeted biologic therapies, asthma remains a leading cause of health care utilization in the United States. Asthma affects 8% of the population. Individuals living in underserved communities and those who identify as underrepresented minorities have prevalence rates that far exceed national rates with African American and Puerto Rican children having prevalence rates of 20% or more. Children and adults living in underserved communities are also at high risk for poor outcomes such as increased symptoms, hospitalizations, and missed school/work. Asthma adds $56 billion to overall health care expenditures in the United States annually. Access to high-quality asthma care remains a barrier to optimal outcomes for many patient populations, and asthma self-management programs have not been implemented on a large scale. Furthermore, opportunities for in-home visiting programs or remote patient monitoring have been largely restricted to grant or philanthropically funded programs. Telemedicine and smartphone applications offer potential solutions for these longstanding barriers to asthma care. These recent advances in technology offer opportunities to enhance traditional in-person models of health care and serve as viable solutions for improving access to hard-to-reach populations such as those who reside in rural and underserved communities. This narrative review aims to provide a summary on how clinicians can leverage technology such as telemedicine and smartphone applications to aid in the delivery of asthma care.