Improving clinician–patient communication in asthma: the HARP project

Thirty million people, that is 6% of the population, in the European Union have asthma (1).Improving the lives of people with asthma may require developments in policy at national or international level in terms of public health measures, legislative change and both patient and professional education (2).But progress at an individual, patient-clinician level is also necessary.The International Primary Care Respiratory Group (IPCRG) is committed to identifying reasons for poor asthma control in individuals (3, 4).The Helping Asthma in Real People (HARP) initiative, which we describe here, is a practical implementation project (not a formal academic study) which seeks to start to address some of these issues using validated clinical assessment tools in real-life clinical practice.Improvements in asthma management require an assessment of each patient that examines current asthma control, evaluates current management (against safety and outcome), addresses adherence to the prescribed treatment, exposes possible reasons for poor adherence and identifies other factors that may be responsible for poor asthma control, such as smoking or untreated rhinitis.