Researchers from CINTESIS – Center for Health Technology and Services Research have won two important national awards in the field of Allergology.
The prizes were awarded during the 38th Annual Meeting of the Portuguese Society of Allergology and Clinical Immunology (SPAIC in Portuguese), subordinated to the theme “Allergy and Quality of Life”, that took place in the beginning of October, in Figueira da Foz.
The SPAIC Prize – AstraZeneca 2017 was awarded to the project “FRASIS – Monitoring of Respiratory Function in Asthma using Smartphone Integrated Sensors”, authored by Mariana Couto, Rute Almeida, Rita Amaral, Altamiro Costa Pereira, Ana Ferreira, Alberto Freitas, Cristina Jácome, Pedro Marques, Pedro Rodrigues and Ana Sá-Sousa, all researchers at CINTESIS.
“FRASIS’ strategy is to develop, integrate and validate a group of mobile health (mHealth) information and communication technologies (ICT) for remote monitoring, using only a smartphone and its integrated sensors,” explain the authors. Therefore, we expect “to achieve greater involvement and empowerment of the patient in their treatment, providing quality prospective information for a better clinical decision”.
The Best Communication Prize SPAIC 2017 was awarded to the work “Identify Cases of Asthma in Epidemiological Studies: Development and Validation of Multivariate Models of Prediction”. Ana Sá-Sousa is the first author of this study which also has the participation of Ana Margarida Pereira, Luís Araújo, Mariana Couto, Tiago Jacinto, Alberto Freitas and João Fonseca.
“The two models developed and validated will allow the identification of asthma cases in epidemiological studies and/or screening for asthma”, says Ana Sá-Sousa who analyzed data from 711 adults included in the national study ICAR – Impact and Control of Asthma and Rhinitis.
It is estimated that allergic diseases affect about a third of the Portuguese population. Allergic Rhinitis is the most common, affecting 25% of the Portuguese, while asthma reaches about 7%.