It may surprise you to know that MP3 players aren’t just used for entertainment purposes or as educational tools. A hospital in Singapore is using MP3 players to allow patients suffering from asthma to cope with their condition more easily.

Controlling asthma requires a combination of medical treatment and for the patient to be sufficiently educated so that can control their breathing using a form of self-management.

SingHealth are the largest healthcare group in Singapore, and they recently ran a program called ‘Telecare for Asthma’, which was designed to evaluate how MP3 players could be used to help treat asthma sufferers. The pilot scheme was launched last year on World Asthma Day and ran for 6 months.

The idea of projects such as these is to use technology to help educate asthma sufferers to ways to cope with their condition, while overcoming the problems of illiteracy.

The initial trials were performed on two different groups of asthmatics, patients with poor literacy and energetic asthmatics.

Of the patients who had the poor literacy skills, many of them found that by using the MP3 players to educate them on the ways to cope with the condition they were able to better understand it.

Only one of those patients said they couldn’t operate the MP3 player, even though they were given full instructions.

This research shows that using MP3 players and other types of technology in the treating of illnesses is a great way forward for medicine.