Childhood Home Asthma Monitoring Project (CHAMP)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Childhood Home Asthma Monitoring Project: prospective observational study to explore the use of contactless home monitoring devices and analysis to predict asthma risk
IRAS ID
282335
Contact name
Prasad Nagakumar
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
BreatheOx Limited (t/a Albus Health)
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 3 months, 0 days
Research summary
Asthma is the commonest chronic childhood condition, affecting 1-in-11 children, characterised by difficulty in breathing, coughing and wheezing. Asthma attacks remain a leading cause of emergency hospital visits and missed school-days. This causes significant disruption in children’s lives, severe anxiety to caregivers and a mounting economic burden to the NHS. Moreover, asthma attacks can be fatal and often preventable, as found by the National Review of Asthma Deaths (NRAD).
Early recognition and management of deteriorations in asthma can prevent attacks and emergencies. While in most cases symptoms appear before an attack, current tools (e.g. breathing tests and symptom-diaries) are unsuitable for long-term use by children as they (a)require daily active use (b) are dependent on child’s technique and (c) do not provide detailed information on factors that predict attacks. By the time children or caregivers perceive a decline, it is often too late, requiring them to rush to hospital. The challenge underpinning this unmet need is the inability to detect the signs of deterioration early at home.
Albus Health, a spin-out from Oxford University, have developed a small non-contact table-top device and associated artificial intelligence algorithms that automatically monitor a range of physiological (e.g. breathing and coughing) and environmental metrics (e.g. home and local air quality) without burdening patients to do or wear anything. This way, the device collects continuous and long-term data for a chronic condition without burdening children and their families.
In this project, we seek to understand and further develop the use of this innovative monitoring and prediction technology in children with asthma. The aim is to develop algorithms and clinical decision-support tools for early detection of increasing asthma risk in children by capturing early warning signs before patients or caregivers perceive them using continuous long-term monitoring, with the goal of enabling early treatment to stop attacks at home.
REC name
London - Central Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
21/LO/0590
Date of REC Opinion
10 Dec 2021
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion