Propeller Health released the first ever application programming interface (API) to provide local asthma conditions to anyone in the US who would like to share this insight with their audiences. This service, Air by Propeller, is open and free to use. Propeller has trained a machine-learning model on millions of days of anonymized data, including where and when people experience asthma symptoms and the environmental conditions at these times, to predict potential effects on people’s breathing. With the launch of Air, Propeller now enables other individuals and organizations to use its local asthma condition calculations to improve the health of people with chronic respiratory disease.
At a one-day company hackathon held last week in Wisconsin, the Propeller team built a series of free tools using the Air API that are also being released to the public today. Propeller has been traveling to Camp Wandawega in Elkhorn, Wisconsin annually over the last four years to come together, celebrate successes, and inspire new ways to create more symptom-free days for people with respiratory disease. This year, the 70 team members broke into small groups to build and launch tools under Air.
“Each year, we return to Camp Wandawega to recommit ourselves to creating a company no one else can build,” said David Van Sickle, CEO, Propeller. “Our culture brings together people who are passionate about health, passionate about technology, and passionate about inventing the future, and puts us to work to solve problems for people with respiratory disease and for those who care for them.”
The tools created during the hackathon demonstrate some of the potential applications of Air API. They range from an email or text subscription, to Alexa and Google Home integration, IFTTT Applets, or an embeddable Air Widget for other websites. Each application notifies people of asthma conditions in their area. Propeller hopes Air tools will inspire others to build applications from Air API so more people can become aware of local asthma conditions.
“We’re excited to release the first version of Air by Propeller, a set of services designed to enable a larger audience to help people with asthma,” said Greg Tracy, CTO, Propeller. “With the new infrastructure and services, people will be able to make use of Propeller’s analytics, which draw on the largest database of respiratory medication use, environmental exposures and conditions. We look forward to seeing how others build on this to change the experience of respiratory disease.”
Air is a continuation of features recently launched by Propeller. This summer, the company introduced a new model of its patient app Daily Asthma Forecast, which leverages machine-learning to create personal predictions of asthma conditions. Propeller for Apple Watch and Find My Inhaler were also introduced over the last few months.
This is just the beginning of Air, and another step in Propeller’s mission to maximize symptom-free days for people with asthma. Propeller will continue to roll out additional tools under Air in the coming months.
