Project: The Relief Study

Mobile health app to improve nasal corticosteroid adherence: a feasibility study

Nasal corticosteroids are widely recognised as the single most effective medication class for controlling hay fever symptoms, which in turn can help improve asthma control for people with both hay fever and asthma.

In recent years, mobile health apps are increasingly used as a tool to help improve self-management of chronic conditions and to improve adherence to medication. However, little is known about mobile health apps being used during the pollen season for improving hay fever self-management and nasal corticosteroid adherence and whether they are found useful by people who suffer from both hay fever and asthma.

Study aims

This study seeks to evaluate the usefulness of a free hay fever mobile health app called “Relief”, which has been made specifically for this study. The prototype app will contain the following functions:

Medication adherence e-diary
Daily hay fever and asthma symptoms e-diary
Medication adherence reminders/notifications
Pollen forecast
Informational content

We seek to recruit 20-30 participants to try out our prototype app for 6 weeks and complete a questionnaire before and after the study. Also, we would like to invite 10 participants from this group to take part in a one-hour interview at the end of the study. These interviews will be arranged by video-call at a convenient time for each participant.

For further details, please read our Patient Information Sheet:

RELIEF Study | Patient Information Sheet | Version 1.9 (1.5 MB PDF)

Take part in the study

Are you, or do you know anyone who is 16-29 years old, have hay fever (seasonal allergic rhinitis) and asthma and is prescribed nasal corticosteroid spray medication?

Help the Relief Study team test a prototype app for improving adherence to nasal corticosteroid medication and self-management of hay fever.

Key People

	Mats Stage Baxter		Professor Jürgen Schwarze
	Study Lead and PhD student		Professor of Child Life and Health
	University of Edinburgh		University of Edinburgh
	Mat's PhD Profile		Jurgen's Profile
	Professor Sir Aziz Sheikh		Professor Andrew Bush
	Centre Director		Professor of Paediatrics and Paediatric Respirology
	University of Edinburgh		Imperial College London
	Aziz's Profile		Andrew's Profile