Collaboration for better asthma products
Asthma UK and British Lung Foundation Partnership has come together with the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, to launch the multi-million-pound asthma health technology fund. The goal of the fund is to design better asthma health technology to help users self-manage their condition. Find out how collaborations can lead to better product designs.
MyAirCoach – personalised, predictive self-management
We’ve seen how collaboration leads to better product design and tools people are more likely to use. Between 2015-18, we were part of the €4.6m MyAirCoach project providing a new way for users to monitor and control their condition, daily and in real-world situations. It was a bold new approach with an aim of reaching clinical trials within three years.
Key to reaching this target were the collaborators involved:
Software engineers from the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Greece
Microsensor experts from Germany
eHealth platform experts from Sweden and the Netherlands
Leading clinical asthma researchers from Imperial College London, the University of Manchester, and the University of Leiden
Software and decision support expertise from the University of Patras, Greece
Asthma inhaler device company
Pharmaceutical representatives
Patients and patient representatives, coordinated by the European Federation of Allergy and Airways Diseases Patients' Associations (EFA) and Asthma UK
Patients also played a really important role in the project, trialing the final product and making sure it was easy to use in their day-to-day lives.
Collaboration is king
Every collaborator eagerly took part in sharing their expertise with lively discussions and exchanges of opinions. There may even have been times when all those involved hoped for less varying opinions in the room!
Sharing expertise and opinions really boosted progress towards the final product as everyone key to the process was present. Surrounding yourself with collaborators who think the same way might seem like the best way to develop a new product, but more often than not, those innovations don’t end up being progressed as they may not meet the standards of the next group of stakeholders to review them.
The key point here is that the right collaborations aren’t likely to be easy, but the easy collaboration is equally unlikely to be right!
If you need further support in developing new collaborations for your application, please get in touch at research@asthma.org.uk to see how we can help.
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