AsthMate -- Supporting Patient Empowerment through Location-Based Smartphone Applications

The ever changing challenges and pressures to the healthcare domain have introduced the urgency of finding a replacement for traditional systems. Breakthroughs registered by information systems, advances in data storage and processing solutions sustained by the ubiquity of gadgets and an efficient infrastructure for network and services have sustained a shift of medical systems towards digital healthcare. Asth Mate application is an e-health tool for asthma patients, acting as an enabler for patient empowerment. The contributions brought by the application are both to the individual and to the community exposing a web application that allows citizens to check the state of the air for the area they live in. The ongoing implementation can benefit of the advantages of cloud computing solutions in order to ensure a better deployment and data accessibility. However, data privacy is a key aspect for such systems. In consideration of this reason, a proper trade-off between the functionality, data openness and security should be reached.