Asthma is a chronic disease and is characterized by inflammations of the airways. Since there is no cure available yet, asthma treatment is aimed at asthma control, to minimize patients’ symptom experiences and to prevent patients of having exacerbations (lung attacks). A key driver in this, is the extent to which patients adhere to their prescribed medication treatment, also called ‘medication adherence’. It has been found that one third of Dutch asthma patients show poor adherence to their treatment.

The client of this project, the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, has developed a smart inhaler in combination with an application. This technology makes it possible to measure medication adherence and present the adherence data to patients and healthcare providers. However, if the motivation of patients remains low to take their medication as prescribed, such interventions will likely not succeed because patients may ignore the reminders sent. Therefore, the aim of this graduation project is to develop a proof of concept for a self-management eHealth intervention that motivates patients to adhere to their medication treatment.

This thesis describes the development of Ademgenoot, an asthma self-management application connected to a smart inhaler. Ademgenoot uses narrative game-elements to motivate asthma patients to adhere to their prescribed medication treatment. In this, Ademgenoot focuses on the positive outcomes of taking the daily maintenance medication. Moreover, the application gives the patients the opportunity to try-out the daily intake of the medication, by offering them a six weeks challenge linked to a personal goal. During this period Ademgenoot visualizes the process of the medication intake in a playful way to make the effect of the medication visible and to prevent disengagement. At the end of the challenge, patients should have gained insights on the effect of the intake of the daily medication and their improved symptom control within their daily lives.

The design process from investigating the user’s needs and values to various idea directions towards the final design will be discussed. In addition, this thesis includes the different research that was conducted to gain a better understanding behind patients’ motives to not follow their treatment, the conducted research on the difficult step of motivating people to change their behaviour and the different user tests that were set up.

A WhatsApp prototype was built to test the concept of Ademgenoot in practice. Patients received screens responding to their medication use for a couple of days via WhatsApp. The end user test delivered the proof of principle that the concept of Ademgenoot has the ability to motivate patients to adhere to their prescribed treatment. In addition, participants expressed to be enthusiastic about the concept and stated that they would like to use the application in their daily life. A positive side-effect appeared to be that some participants mentioned that it would help in the creation of a habit.

Follow-up studies are recommended on finding additional ways to track the development of the patients’ daily wellbeing within the application. This and other recommendations are presented in the final part of this thesis.