People of all ages with asthma can halve the number of asthma attacks they suffer and become 15% better at taking their medication if they use a medical-grade App to manage their health.

Smart Inhalers are great, but they have one big problem: they need to be connected to your smartphone to send their data. This can be a problem for younger children at school who aren’t allowed to have a Smartphone – or older patients with asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), bronchiectasis or other lung health problems who find using a smartphone difficult.

Aseptika, a UK company that specialises in making smart inhalers for patients with chronic respiratory conditions, has been cofunded by the UK’s Innovation Agency, Innovate UK. The Smart Award will help the company develop its third-generation smart inhaler tracker, which will have 5G mobile connectivity built-in. This means that patients will no longer have to send their data via a smartphone to their clinical teams, carers or parents – it will just send information over the airwaves directly to the Company’s cloud databases, which are stored under the UK’s GDPR data protection laws

The new PUFFClicker3 will not only be a universal device for both the cylinder-type inhalers that young children and older patients use (pressurised Metered Dose Inhalers pMDI), but also the dry powder inhalers (DPI), which many adults are now prescribed because they do not have gasses which contribute to global heating.

This new inhaler tracker will also be “smart” and will give information and advice to patients on how to take their medicines properly. Its software will run on Aseptika’s Medi-OS medical-grade operating system so that it can be approved as a medical device in the UK (UKCA mark) as well as in other countries around the world (CE marked as a Class IIa medical device under EU MDR 2017/745).

Another benefit of transmitting data without a Smartphone is that it makes it easier to export because the multilanguage PUFFClicker3 can work with locally developed Apps without having to connect to it by Bluetooth. This makes integration quicker, cheaper and means that these Apps may not have to be certified a Class IIa medical device to display the information that the PUFFClicker3 collects.

The Company expects to take PUFFClicker3 into production by the end of 2023 and launch it in the UK and internationally in early 2024.