Each day 11 people die of asthma in the U.S., and it accounts for one-quarter of all emergency room visits. Since 1980 the asthma death rate overall has increased by 50%.

A new iPhone app called AsthmaMD, which was created by am Pejham (a doctor and researcher) and Salim Madjd, aims to help some of those sufferers. The application let’s them keep a diary of attacks, helping them keep records of the severity of attacks, medications used, etc.

But what’s really interesting about AsthmaMD: users can opt in to share this data anonymously with the service. The data is aggregated and will be shared with researchers. The company says that will help doctors and researchers better understand the disease, and may help people know when an attack is more likely.

Asthma is one of the top 5 most costly illnesses in America. It is things like this app that can help people manage their diseases at home by themselves and therefore keep them out of the ER and ultimately save them money. It’s not too far off in the future when we’re all going to be spending our own money up front on healthcare because very few people will be able to afford today’s version of $5 co-pay sickcare. Anything that can help us manage our health better and save us money will be a huge hit.

AsthmaMD Helps Asthma Sufferers, Gathers Aggregate Research Data