14 Mar Breathing room: Propeller Health’s David Van Sickle focuses on a digital treatment for asthma
About 15 years ago, David Van Sickle worked for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a “disease detective,” looking for the preliminary signs of epidemics. That’s when he became fascinated with the curious case of a community-wide asthma attack in Barcelona, Spain.
Starting around 1980, there were reports of hospital emergency rooms being overwhelmed with patients suffering from severe respiratory problems, but the source of the reactions was a mystery for several years.
“They finally identified that people were having symptoms in this particular area of the city because of exposure to soybean dust being put into silos,” says Van Sickle. “They didn’t have proper filters on the silos, and when they were loading and unloading soybeans in the harbor it would release these clouds of soybean dust, which is a potent asthmagen that had never been identified.
“It took bringing people in and asking them where they were when their attack began,” he continues, “then marking that on a map to figure out what was happening.”
That was Van Sickle’s first exposure to the potential of using big data to track and treat asthma, which eventually led to him co-founding Madison-based Propeller Health. Today, as the company’s CEO, he strives to simplify and personalize the treatment of chronic respiratory disease by making sensors that attach to inhalers and track their use.
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