Study: Texting Kids With Asthma About Illness Information, Symptoms Can Help Them

Sending texts about asthma symptoms and information can be helpful to a young asthmatic's health, according to a Georgia Tech study.

According to a post on the university's website:

In a study by the Georgia Institute of Technology, pediatric patients who were asked questions about their symptoms and provided information about asthma via SMS text messages showed improved pulmonary function and a better understanding of their condition within four months, compared to other groups.

T.J. Yun, former Georgia Tech Ph.D. student, and study leader Rosa Arriaga, senior research scientist in the College of Computing’s School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech Arriaga are behind the research, "A Text Message a Day Keeps the Pulmonologist Away."

In the university's newsroom post, Arriaga said: "It appears that text messages acted as an implicit reminder for patients to take their medicine and by the end of the study, the kids were more in tune with their illness."

Yun and Arriaga presented their findings last week at the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2013 in Paris.