Minority patients have difficulty controlling their asthma, due to factors including poverty, environmental exposures, and suboptimal self-management skills. Mobile health apps can help these patients monitor and manage asthma by providing real-time feedback on symptoms and strategies to help improve adherence to asthma medications.

Jonathan M. Feldman, Ph.D., and Sunit P. Jariwala, M.D., have received a five-year, $1 million grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to create a mobile health app called ASTHMAXcel Voice—an upgrade of ASTHMAXcel PRO, an earlier mobile app that they and their colleagues developed. ASTHMAXcel Voice will employ vocal biomarker technology that uses machine learning to analyze a 6-second voice sample to detect whether or not asthma is under control.

This project will include adapting, testing, and refining the ASTHMAXcel Voice app and conducting a randomized controlled clinical trial to compare the refined ASTHMAXcel Voice intervention to usual care with respect to outcomes such as emergency department visits, patient and provider satisfaction, and quality of life.

Dr. Feldman is professor of pediatrics and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Einstein, and professor of psychology at Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology at Yeshiva University. Dr. Jariwala is professor of medicine at Einstein and an allergy/immunology physician at Montefiore. (1R21HS028892-01A1)