Today, May 3^rd, is World Asthma Day. World Asthma Day is an annual event organized by the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) to improve asthma awareness and care around the world. At HCO we devoted time to look at the global activities commemorating the day, posting and tweeting as well as re-tweeting a good number of interesting articles. I’m Sharon, one of the co-founders of HCO. It’s almost midnight here, and I am mentally reviewing everything I saw today. I’ve had asthma all my life and today, I drew very real inspiration from the activities, pledges and wealth of information available to our community.  The democratization of information afforded by the internet sheds light on a chronic disease that is often easily overlooked. I’m often amazed by the lack of understanding of the impact of this disease. It is a fact that 1 in 14 children in the world has asthma – it’s not a disease restricted to a few demographics, nor one that everyone somehow grows out of. Nothing conveys the size of the problem better than this infographic by the American Thoracic Society.

Despite all this information, and all of these activities, asthma attacks, hospitalizations and deaths still occur at alarming rates every day.

What’s not really reflected in the statistics – the emotional toll this places on caregivers, parents, siblings and spouses of asthmatics. As a child with asthma, I focused almost solely on how I felt. As an adult, I can appreciate more what my parents and sibling went through, and what my spouse goes through every time I have an asthma attack. For them, the loss of peace of mind is hardest – how do you know when next your loved one’s breath will be stolen?

There’s a lot of great work going on in the space, but there’s much more to be done. That thought, and everything else that happened today invigorates me: our solution, which addresses the very real problems of asthmatics and their caregiver is necessary, and the world is ready. We must press on to bring our solution to this market in need – the world is ready for ADAMM (Automated Device for Asthma Monitoring and Management) and what it delivers – Intelligent Asthma Management™.