Researcher uses GPS to find asthma causes

David Van Sickle is looking for a few pioneering asthmatics. He wants to attach a GPS device to their inhalers before they boldly go out into a spring world filled with allergens.

His goal is to map where and when environmental exposures trigger asthma symptoms, prompting them to puff on their "rescue" inhalers, which deliver the medicine that keeps them breathing. It's one of two asthma-related projects in which Van Sickle, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar in the Department of Population Health Sciences, has worked with students in biomedical engineering.

It's easy to predict problems when an asthmatic visits a "cat lady" or runs through a field of ragweed. But Van Sickle plans to use global positioning technology (GPS) to find previously unknown causes of the lung disease and help doctors better monitor whether treatment is controlling symptoms and improving quality of life.

In addition to tracing the causes of asthma, Van Sickle is also interested in better care for people who have the disease. Both interests have drawn him to work with the talented students enrolled in biomedical engineering classes. Past students designed early prototypes of the "asthmap" GPS device, which the CDC has now funded for use in the ongoing trial.

Current students enrolled in BME 201 are working on a low-cost spirometer, a device that measures lung function and is used in diagnosing asthma and other lung diseases.

Van Sickle, who has studied the increase of asthma in India, said commercially available spirometers are too expensive for most clinics there. The students are working on a design that could lower the cost from about $1,500 to $50. The project is set up as an "open source" endeavor on the Internet, allowing anyone access to their designs.

Raj B. Singh, chief respiratory physician at Apollo Hospital in Chennai, India, says that asthma is often misdiagnosed there due to a lack of proper equipment.

Availability of a cheap, accurate and robust spirometer would certainly create more interest in performing lung function measurements, resulting in better care for people with chronic lung diseases in India.

While the spirometers are likely to be of immediate benefit in the developing world, the GPS mapping may also someday help attack the spread of asthma.

Van Sickle says he can envision a time when GPS mapping of asthma outbreaks can allow researchers to see exactly what is making people sick.

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