Study outlines feasibility of screen-sharing for asthma action plan consultations

Study assesses the feasibility and utility of using screen-sharing technology to complete asthma action plans remotely

A study published in npj Primary Care Respiratory Medicine last week assessed the feasibility and utility of using screen-sharing technology to complete asthma action plans remotely.

Asthma action plans are an important component of supporting people with live with asthma.   Action plans are filled in together by a healthcare professional and the patient with information on how to recognise early warning asthma symptoms and the actions to take to bring the symptoms under control. Remote consultations are convenient – and essential in a COVID-19 pandemic - but are criticised for not allowing completion of a paper-based action plan.

This study aimed to find out if ‘sharing the screen’ in a remote video-consultation was possible.

Screen-sharing technology for action plans

The study looked at a number of video-call technologies and chose two that offered different features:

• Attend Anywhere is a Google Chrome-based virtual clinic software which is available in the NHS for video-consultations.
• Zoom is commercial software that offers features such as recording, file transfer, and remote control: giving both host and participant control of the other’s mouse or keyboard.

What we found

There were positive and negative aspects of both applications. 

Both Attend Anywhere and Zoom both worked on all the devices, though some features did not work with some devices. Voice reader technology (used by people with visual problems) did not always work with the action plan.

People liked Attend Anywhere because it was badged as an NHS system which some fond reassuring.   It allowed the ‘patient’ to see the action plan being completed, but they could not edit it.

Zoom had more functionality – it allowed the ‘patient’ to contribute to control the doctor’s screen and help complete the plan. This allowed them to ‘take ownership’ and engage more with the production of the action plan.

Potential for delivery of care

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic almost all asthma reviews have been conducted remotely and this screen-sharing technology could be widely used in the future. The video consultations can make it easier for people to arrange an asthma review – and several of the people in the study said they preferred the idea of a video-consultation to being reviewed by phone.   

Centre Contribution

Several members of the Asthma UK Centre for Applied Research’s Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) Group helped with the study, and Eve Smyth is an author on the paper. Omer Hamour was a medical student when he did this project with the IMP2ART team at the University of Edinburgh. He was supervised by Professor Hilary Pinnock, Centre Network Co-ordinator.

Speaking about the usefulness of online consultations, Hilary said:

“Remote consultations are convenient for people with asthma, but there has always been a concern that it is not possible to complete action plans. Screen sharing in video consultations overcome that problem. When we designed this study, we thought this would be something for the future – but with the coronavirus the future has arrived, and this is technology we can begin to use now”    

Eve, who is a member of the Centre’s PPI Group, reflected on how this technology could be used by people with asthma in the treatment and management of their disease:

“This is a good beginning. Once we get all the software working together, screen-sharing will be an excellent way to set up an action plan for people who can't use the paper ones.”

Read the article

Read this article in npj Primary Care Respiratory Medicine

Cite as

Hamour, O., Smyth, E. & Pinnock, H. Completing asthma action plans by screen-sharing in video-consultations: practical insights from a feasibility assessment. npj Prim. Care Respir. Med. 30, 48 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41533-020-00206-8