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By Greg Bartlett

It’s pollen season. To some of us that just means a fine layer of yellow over everything and the need to go and get the car washed constantly. To others, pollen season has a more serious meaning. It may mean constantly feeling sick or it could even mean an asthma attack.

For someone with asthma, an asthma attack can be a frightening and dangerous occurrence. If you have asthma, you want to do anything possible to avoid danger areas and places or situations which may trigger an attack. New research into GPS tracking can enable you to do exactly that.

Researches have recently added GPS tracking devices to asthma inhalers so that they can track the usage of the inhalers and identify problem areas. The program, developed in part by a scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is aimed at identifying problem areas and letting students know where trigger areas are on campus. The inhalers, still relatively small, can be used for ten days before they need to be charged. They can be used as normal inhalers but they allow the researchers to track and study the asthma inhaler use trends, noting both time and location of usage. The devices work inside and outside and can help the researchers discover why people suffer from asthma.

The use of GPS tracking on asthma inhalers will allow researchers to study inhaler usage and hopefully find new environmental effects on asthma, allowing scientists and researchers to provide further warning to those who suffer from asthma and to protect them from trigger areas.

Since asthma attacks can be deadly, you want to avoid triggering an attack. But sometimes the triggers aren’t obvious – unlike pollen or pets – and you don’t know where the dangers are. The inhaler research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison hopes to locate the more hidden trigger dangers and to discover what some of the other triggers are to help all asthma sufferers avoid such dangers.

Eventually the GPS enabled asthma inhalers may be available to more than just University of Wisconsin-Madison students, but for now the uses are limited to the university’s research program. With the use of GPS tracking devices connected to asthma inhalers, however, researchers are able to make great progress into discovering the reasons behind asthma attacks and helping asthma sufferers to avoid the dangers of pollen season. The information gathered through the research will be available to help everyone.