Disposable nitric oxide POC (point-of-care) test for home care easy management of asthma in chronic patients

ended

The ultimate goal we seek in ASTHMAPOC project is to develop a “ready to the market” point-of-care disposable device for self-patient management of chronic asthma. According to WHO statistics more than 235 million people suffer from asthma worldwide. As for all other chronic diseases, effective management of asthma is full of challenges because of the difficulties in determining the appropriate treatment programs and the low adherence to control medications. This typically results in many patients non-effectively prevented from asthma exacerbations and the consequent unnecessary too often visits to emergencies. ASTHMAPOC aims providing a low-cost affordable solution to chronic asthmatic patients for self-management of their disease. Patients who self-test can have a better control over their chronic condition, and make therapeutic, behavioral, and environmental adjustments in accordance with advice from healthcare professionals. Our approach to achieve ASTHMAPOC goals is to develop a point-of-care device based on disposable electrochemical biosensors capable to determine the concentration of FENO (fractional exhaled nitric oxide). FENO emerged in the last decade as an important biomarker for asthma assessment and management. The clinical utility of FENO has been already validated to the extent that currently there are approved standards in US and EU (further details will be provided in section 1.3). However, only few point-of-care devices have been developed for clinical use (section 1.4), while there is no single product for self-patient management in the market. This niche market is the one we seek exploring with ASTHMAPOC, but in order to be successful in this market we need first to carry out an in-depth feasibility study.