By Dr Greg Burch, Joint CEO & Clinical Director, Tiny Medical Apps

Young people love their phones. So it makes sense that we use technology to try to make their health experience better. The Digital Health Passport (DHP) is a mobile self-management app that has been co-designed to help young people take better control of their health. It focuses on making care a bit smarter and more convenient.

The #AskAboutAsthma campaign encourages children and young people, their families, and those involved in their care, to ensure four simple and effective measures to help them control their asthma:

1. Get an asthma action plan in place

The Digital Health Passport provides home for the asthma action plan and makes it easy to share digitally with friends and family. The plan and emergency instructions are always accessible as the mobile phone is never far away!

2.Understand how to use inhalers correctly

The DHP helps teach correct inhaler technique with videos from Asthma & Lung UK and Beat Asthma aimed at younger people. Furthermore it can help to improve adherence with daily reminders to take medication correctly.

3. Schedule an asthma review – every year and after every attack

All the outputs of the review (action plan, symptom/peak flow diary, educational materials, emergency instructions) are all held within the Digital Health Passport. The DHP can help clinicians view symptom graphs over the days and months leading up to the review or the weeks following.

4. Consider air pollution and its impact on lung health

The Digital Health Passport has daily air quality alerts, and instructions from the Clean Air Hub. Plus easy to read air quality education. Together, the alerts and knowledge of what to do, may help with trigger avoidance.

The Digital Health Passport will be widely available in 2022/23 with funding from NHS England Transformation Directorate.

For more information please get in touch with the developers hello@tinymedicalapps.com

Watch this short video where Greg demos a Digital Health Passport: https://youtu.be/gzWiqcdHWPc.

Visit the #AskAboutAsthma 2022 campaign page for more content.