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• physiology and non-communicable disease
• bioengineering/medical devices
• Other - please suggest keyword(s):

• Medicine

• Respiratory Medicine

Working to bring digital technology to healthcare the joint RCSI and TCD INCA team (www.incadevice.com) is a multidisciplinary team of clinicians, nurses, engineers, biostatisticians and psychologists.

The INCA technology uses digital audio to assess when and how an inhaler was used. The team have developed technologies to quantify adherence to inhalers, inhaler technique and lung function. We have used this information to develop strategies to improve medication adherence, a training that research students from all disciplines have found rewarding . Our studies also focus on understanding the relationship between disease progress and medication use.

In prior studies in the community, as well as among patients attending specialist clinics we have identified that both adherence and inhaler technique are poor. Poor adherence is far from a patient?s fault rather, its a duty of the team prescribing the therapy to devise systems to ensure that the patient is given the opportunity to . Hence, another aspect of work being performed by the INCA team is to understand the deficit in the care system that leads to poor adherence.

Digital technology offers a lot of promise to improve healthcare, our team aims to deliver this promise. We believe that this area of work would be of interest to future clinical leaders who have an interest in how digital technology and influence healthcare.

Over the last few years we have collected longitudinal data on nearly a thousand patients using inhalers.

We have several projects available; For example, to analyse this data and relate features of cognition with adherence, features of disease questionnaires that relate to adherence, the relationship of adherence to measured adherence, to assess the relationship of healthcare use and adherence or assess the relationship of acoustic features of inhalation to lung function.

Projects are available to help design and test interventions to promote feedback based on prior patterns of inhaler use and to assess the clinical effectiveness of such interventions.

Projects are available to also develop expertise in clinical trials, including data analysis, regulatory and design aspects, from ongoing or planned funded randomised and observational clinical studies.