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The eAMS stands for the Electronic Asthma Management System. This is a chronic disease management system made for patients with asthma and their providers. Patients complete the eAMS questionnaire on their personal computer or device (smartphone or tablet) in advance of their visit, this information is processed in accordance with the latest asthma guidelines, and clinicians receive clinical decision support within their EMR on how to optimize that individual patient's asthma care according to best evidence.

The eAMS was designed by primary care providers, for primary care providers. The tool was designed to assist clinicians in busy real-world settings. It can be used by any team member, including prescribers (e.g. physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants), and non-prescribers (e.g. asthma educators, nurses, pharmacists, etc.) who may be involved in asthma care. Asthma patients must be at least 16 years old to use the system.

Like in many chronic diseases, large gaps between best evidence and actual care have been identified in asthma. The eAMS was designed to help providers bridge the three main evidence-to-practice gaps which are the major causes of patients having poor asthma control. These are:

  1. Assessment of asthma control level according to guideline criteria (93% of patients with asthma have poor control according to guideline criteria, but poor control is seldom identified)
  2. Adjustment of asthma medications according to level of control (~ 2/3 of patients with poor disease control are not on 1st or 2nd line controller therapy, which would achieve control in most patients)
  3. Provision of a personalized asthma action plan to each patient with asthma (multiple randomized controlled trials and systematic reviews show that providing patients with a simple self-management asthma action plan dramatically improves health outcomes and reduces healthcare utilization, including unscheduled outpatient visits, yet action plans are seldom provided).

The eAMS was developed by researchers at the University of Toronto and other centres around Canada, over a decade. Each part of the system was systematically designed, built, and tested with user input for workflow integration and user interface optimization. Over 20 peer-reviewed publications support various aspects of the eAMS, including a clinical trial in busy, real-world family practices demonstrating significant improvements in quality of care across all 3 main evidence-to-practice gaps in asthma.

It's quick! Based on our testing in clinics, it takes providers between 3 to 5 minutes to complete the eAMS decision support, compared to over 30 minutes for the same workflows when completed manually. This includes assessing asthma control level, optimizing medications accordingly, and generating a personalized asthma action plan for a patient. For added efficiency, the eAMS also automatically documents asthma control and all decision support actions in a chart note that gets posted in the EMR.

All personal health information is kept private and secure, and is handled in accordance with provincial personal health information protection laws. For a more detailed description of our privacy practices, please see our Privacy Notice.

No, the eAMS is completely free to use for both patients and healthcare providers! Our goal is to improve asthma care without any financial barriers for patients or providers.

We have built the eAMS to seamlessly integrate with your existing electronic medical record (EMR) system, with no additional login requirements. Contact our onboarding team for simple instructions on downloading the eAMS plug-in for your EMR.

After your clinic has installed the eAMS, please notify your asthma patients that they can create an eAMS account for free by downloading the eAMS app on the App or Play store, or visiting the Patient Portal.

Absolutely. Our client support team will be pleased to provide a detailed eAMS demo video for your individual EMR, and/or a live demo. Click here to set up an appointment.

By providing guideline-based clinical recommendations, the eAMS also serves as an educational tool for clinicians. The eAMS is eligible for Mainpro+® continuing professional development (CPD) credits under the Practice Audits/Quality Assurance Program and/or the Linking Learning Program. The eAMS team helps providers with their Mainpro+® application.

You can contact our team for any questions or feedback through our Contact Us form.