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Project of The Month September 2002
Asthmatic Children Get their Own Web Portal
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By Naia Bang / Texthuset Aalborg
These days the doors are opened to a new virtual meeting point for asthmatic children in North Denmark, their parents and professionals. The www.astmacenter.dk is the name of the Web site developed by the organisations behind the DDN-project called The Asthma Centre - The Electronic Shared Patient Record. The Web site offers quizs, chatrooms, stories and fun drawings – still, this is deep serious stuff. |
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- The object of the home page is to make asthmatic children – and their parents – much more aware of the treatment of asthma, and it should be instrumental in making the children assume ownership of their own health, explains Grethe Kirkegaard Mayntzhusen, project manager working with the IT-Health organisation under the County of North Jutland.
The homepage consists of three elements: AstmaKlubben, - the Asthma Club - for children and young people between 6 and 16 of age, AstmaForum, which is for the parents, and last, not least, the AstmaCenter for doctors specialists and other professionals.
Monitoring the Air
The Asthma Club is the children's own homepage. From their doctors or specialists they receive a personal password – Neither parents, their brothers and sisters nor children who are not suffering from asthma, can ”look over their shoulders”.
- The children are performing peakflow-measurements themselves and use them in monitoring the development of their asthma. It works the way that the child blows its peakflow meter and enters measurements in a table on the site. The table is colour coded – in the way of a traffic light: If the dot is green, everything is all right, but if the dot turns yellow or red, a message on the screen will tell the child what to do – for example increase medication or consult the doctor if the condition persists, explains Grethe Mayntzhusen:
- If the digits are in the red or yellow bracket the patient's doctor will be able to observe this immediately in the medical part of system, the AstmaCenter, and the General Practitioner, the Hospital of Aalborg, the pediatric department, or the specialist in medical charge of the child, will be able to extract the appropriate information. If a patient has remained in the yellow or red bracket for an extended period of time, the doctor can take direct contact to the patient – either by e-mailing the child or by contacting the parents. And if time is due for a checkup session at the doctor's, he or she can send the child an automated reminder that right now is an important time to attend to its peak flow measurements. And the system can send automated notices to the child, for example two weeks prior to the next visit.
Play and Learn
In addition to the peak flow measurements the system enables the child to keep a diary. Here the child can enter what he or she was doing the day seizures got worse. Whether the doctor is allowed to read the diary is up to the child.
- In a doctor's consultancy it can be hard to recall why your breathing got worse the previous Thursday. Here the diary can be of great help, Grethe Mayntzhusen points out.
The diary and the peakflow measurements are central elements in the Asthma Club, but it includes additional offers. For example the children can familiarize themselves with the terminology of asthma in the small encyclopedia, and they can learn more about the medicine they take. There is a debating page and a chat room, where patients meet up and chat with fellow asthmatic children, and several well edited stories tell of other asthmatic children who are in e.g. sports or keep pets – situations experienced by the children in their own everyday lives, and which are known to be a problem. The children can also test their knowledge of astma medicine. The home page also offers small quizs to draw the children's attention to the treatment of their asthma.
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Hanne is measuring her lung function using a so-called peakflow meter, and she enters the results in a personal table on the home page. A colour marking of red, yellow or green, respectively shows the current state of the lung function to the child, and this gives Hanne an indication of whether she can do sports today.
Model photo. The picture is from video on the project located on the Web site of the Digital North Jutland. |
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Grown-up Talk
Just as the parents have no access to the Asthma Club or the children's diary notes or chats with other asthmatic children, the parents' Website, the AstmaForum, can also be accessed only by using a password. Here the parents can write with fellow parents to asthmatic children and exchange experience, and they can ask questions to the nurse of the out-patients' Allergy Clinic at the Hospital of Aalborg. They have access to the same encyclopedia as the children – and they, too, can put their knowledge to the test in small quizs.
The Electronic Shared Patient Record
Peakflow measurings, questions to the nurse and other relevant information, to which the child has allowed access, can be viewed in the electronic shared patient record, located on the medical AstmaCenter Web site.
- This is a great advantage! If for example the child has been to the pediatric department, the general practitioner can immediately read the plans of action that have been agreed on with the child at the pediatric department. This way the doctor, the specialist and the pediatrician of the hospital can share experience, points out Grethe Mayntzhusen.
All project participants have made their contribution to the development of www.astmacenter.dk, while NetDoktor A/S has been in charge of the practical design. A control group of children of various ages have been testing the homepage, they have given a constructive feedback, and the homepage hast been adapted to their desires.
- In the first go the homepage is offered to the approximately 150 asthmatic patients related to the pediatric department of the hospital of Aalborg and patients of the associated doctors and specialists. Many of the doctors have already discussed the project with the children and received their commitment in advance. They – and their parents - will now receive their personal passwords. But of course the long term idea is that the www.astmacenter.dk should be offered to all asthmatic children in the county of North Jutland, tells Grethe Mayntzhusen.
Read more about the project on the www.astmacenter.dk or in the project diary on the homepage of the Digital North Denmark, www.det-digitale-nordjylland.dk. Also the Lighthouse Centre has had a small video produced to tell about the project. It can be downloaded from the DDN Website under the item ”Se filmklip fra 6 projekter i Det Digitale Nordjylland”.
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Fun drawings and short, well organized stories from everyday life with asthma is only one among several offers that are meant to motivate children to use the Asthma Club on www.astmacenter.dk |
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