Toward an asthma patient-reported outcome measure for use in digital remote monitoring

Abstract

Objective: To develop and test a patient-reported outcome measure (PROM) for suitability in digital remote asthma symptom monitoring to identify uncontrolled asthma.

Methods: We modified a 5-item PROM that does not require a license, the asthma control measure (ACM), from a one-month to one-week lookback period, and evaluated it using the 5-item asthma control questionnaire (ACQ-5). We recruited subjects with asthma through MTurk, an online platform.

Results: In a sample of 498 subjects, the ACM identified uncontrolled asthma with sensitivity 0.99 and specificity 0.65. The two measures correlated with r = 0.81.

Conclusion: The ACM modified to a weekly lookback period can differentiate patients with well-controlled asthma from those with uncontrolled asthma. This PROM does not require a license and can be used in digital remote monitoring interventions.

Keywords: Asthma; patient-reported outcome measure; symptom monitoring.