Space Apps Challenge 2018

Background:

Our team is called Particulados (related about our idea of working with special particles) and we are composed by undergraduate students of Biotechnology, Computer Science, Environmental Engineering, Medicine, Pharmacy and a Software Developer with knowledge on hardware and prototyping.

At first, we observed our objective to create something usual and innovative on health area. In Curitiba, Brazil, we looked forward about themes in common, divided by twenty different challenges. So, we chose the 13D challenge, named Health Makes Wealth. And we faced with many ideas and discussions about how to achieve our objectives.

One of the main necessities was to connect NASA Data with so many ideas of integrating technologies and health abilities of solving global problems. Remembering the most famous citation of NASA’s astronaut Neil Armstrong, we want to give our small step for a man, but one giant leap for mankind. After a great brainstorming session, we entered with an agreement about facing diseases and health problems related to air pollution. We did a lot of research combined with different views of what to do and how to do with so many information. And we got a great idea coming from a very normal respiratory disease occurred here: Asthma.

Taking into account the most diverse factors that cause air pollution, we cannot look with our eyes about the composition of air in big cities or in industrial regions. Also, the difficult to detect risk areas for people with respiratory diseases.

It is estimated that 10 people daily die on the USA due to asthmatic crisis. The impact of the disease affects 284 million people, and 1/3 are children. This disease, besides generating symptoms, like suffocation, causing 58 billion dollars of costs only in the USA.

Knowing the air pollution is one of the principal aggravating causes for asthma, we created an App that integrates NASA and other public organizations data. Creating informations about real-time air quality.

Therefore, our project consists about a monitoring web of human and environmental health across data correlating of macroenvironment offered by NASA and microenvironment generated by a sensor that connects with the quick relief inhaler.

We have created a device that will be coupled to the quick relief inhaler, and in addition to sending a signal to the app when it is used, it also has sensors that detect particulate material, temperature and humidity, generating information about air quality.

Correlating this data with others provided by NASA and with regional monitoring networks, it is possible to rehearse the predictive analysis and then generate real-time air quality information for the user.

The app's home page will display air quality information as well as recent asthma attacks recently reported by other users in the region

This information will be useful to alert and warn users about the areas at greatest risk, to prepare local hospitals for the number of patients with this problem, and also for institutions interested in solving that.

About data generated by the sensors, it will enrich the already existing data of NASA ones, besides performing external analysis in real time, it will generate data on the air quality of indoor environments, which the public agencies can not measure and also have other pollutants like mites and dust

NASA data by itself is not enough to confidently alert a user that he may have a crisis. Our local data, besides being real-time, take into account the experience of other users and can arrive at a more precise combination of factors that create a crisis in a person with asthma.

Link of App code: https://gitlab.com/thsousa/asthma-care

Resources:

• An asthma quick relief inhaler with a temperature sensor, humidity and air quality
• App created for IOS and Android
• Internet connection (3G or Wi-Fi)
• Detection of particles in the air

Challenges Faced:

• How to integrate NASA Stats with our original project?
• Look about what to do with graphs and data about
• Our ability to integrate our skills when everybody;
• How to handle with existing similar projects;
• How to do a viable project;
• How to find a small particle sensor;
• How to survive without sleep.