WEDNESDAY, April 30, 2025 (HealthDay News) -- A smartphone app can help asthma patients better track their symptoms and live healthier, a new study says.

The app helps patients monitor their symptoms in between visits with their doctor, researchers reported April 23 in JAMA Network Open.

People given the app experienced improvements in their quality of life during a 20-month period, researchers found.

“Overall, these data suggest that the between-visit symptom monitoring led to an average improvement in asthma quality of life among study patients, although this improvement did not meet the threshold of a minimally important change,” concluded the research team led by Robert Rudin, a senior information scientist with the non-profit RAND research group.

“However, the intervention showed potential benefits for certain subgroups and may be useful in other chronic diseases in which between-visit symptoms are important, such as rheumatoid disorders, musculoskeletal disorders, and mental health conditions,” researchers added.

For the study, researchers randomly assigned half of a group of 366 patients to use a smartphone app to track their asthma symptoms in between office visits.

The app tracked things like their peak air flows and offered educational material about managing asthma. If patients’ symptoms grew worse, they were offered the option of calling their doctor.

Results show the app particularly helped people ages 18 to 44 and those who started off with a lower quality of life score or more uncontrolled asthma.

The app might be more effective among these patients because “those patients have more potential to improve their knowledge, skills and confidence in managing their health, and this intervention helps them with those factors,” researchers concluded.

More information

The American Lung Association has more on managing asthma.

SOURCES: JAMA Network Open, April 23, 2025; RAND, news release, April 23, 2025