When a research team from CINTESIS – Center for Health Technology and Services Research goes to school, something Scientifically Provable can happen.
Cristina Jácome was one of the researchers from CINTESIS who participated in the activity in the context of the initiative Scientifically Probable
This April, a group of researchers from CINTESIS left the university premises and went back to school, more specifically to the Schools Group of São Lourenço, in Ermesinde. The objective was to involve the school community in studies aiming to develop and validate mobile applications designed for people living with respiratory diseases, such as Asthma and Allergic Rhinitis.
The researchers Rute Almeida, Cristina Jácome, Rita Amaral and Manuel Magalhães were the facilitators of a number of activities, including the performance of a spirometry, filling in questionnaires and the interaction of the students with the mobile app Inspirers Arcade, addressed towards children from 4 to 12 years of ager, living with asthma.
“One of the major innovations of this mobile application is that, instead of just using fingers, players have to blow into the microphone to play. The data collected through the murmur will allow, in the future, to analyze parameters of respiratory function, which are key in the monitoring of asthma control,” they explain.
In the future, they say, this application should be a useful and fun tool for the follow-up of children with asthma, even allowing for the detection of emergency situations.
The researcher Rita Amaral was one of the activities facilitator
The app used by the students from the Schools Group of São Lourenço is an example of a broader work developed by the researchers aiming to improve the control of respiratory diseases that have a high prevalence in the population, particularly, in children and youngsters.
Previously, CINTESIS had already been in the Group Schools of Cerco, in Porto, and in the Group of Schools nº 3 of Rio Tinto, in Gondomar, in the context of the Scientifically Probable Program, under the responsibility of the State Secretariat of Education, through the Network of School Libraries, and the Secretariat of State for Science, Technology and Higher Education, which aims to promote scientific culture in Portugal.