Human factors engineering for mobile health applications

Childhood asthma has effectively doubled since 1980 and currently affects about 8% of the U.S. childhood population. Efficiently analyzing quality of air data, which would ultimately improve the information available to parents with children suffering from asthma, is crucial to reduce the likelihood of a serious attack. In order to accomplish this task, the use of low-cost, wearable, environmental sensors contribute to construct a live “air-care” pollution map. Creating an alpha prototype application to gauge how well participants interact with and interpret healthcare information utilizing a “Wizard of Oz” paradigm becomes an important component in the research.