News

• Erin Reilly (Texas Immersive Institute) and Dr. Hyekyun Rhee (School of Nursing) were awarded the Discovery to Impact Grant, a Texas Proof of Concept (POC) Award for “Camp Cura: AI Assisted Immersive Asthma Management.” Thanks to this award, we've partnered with Compedia a global leader with 35 years of experience in educational product development for healthcare and STEM.

• June 2025 - Camp Cura is looking for Beta Testers! If you or someone you know (ages 18+) has asthma and would like to help us improve this mobile experience, please reach out!

Interested Beta Testers, please email texasimmersive@gmail.com

Our Goal

In partnership with Dr. Hyekyun Rhee from The University of Texas at Austin's School of Nursing, Camp Cura's goal was to design a scalable platform to help young adults communicate their chronic disease by socially and emotionally connecting with a Virtual Being as a friend. ​Camp Cura’s prototype is an experience for young adults to discover how to communicate and manage their asthma independently.​ We wanted to explore humanlike conversation using GPT-3 to socially and emotionally connect between the user and the character.

The Research

Did you know that...?

• 44% of children and >60% of adults with current asthma had uncontrolled asthma (2018-2020)
• Frequent and intense symptoms lead to an increased risk of acute healthcare utilization, school absenteeism/missing work days, and poor quality of life.
• Adolescents and young adults suffer more significant asthma-related morbidity than other age groups.
• If untreated, long-term lung damage (‘lung remodeling”) can occur.
• ~70% of adults with severe asthma reported having had asthma symptoms before the age of 20.
• Untreated pediatric asthma can potentially progress to active or serious disease as an adult.
• Discontinuity of asthma care among young adults with asthma is common.
• Adolescents with asthma seek guidance and value support from peers with asthma in managing asthma.
• Interactions/support with peers with asthma positively impact asthma management and overall well-being in adolescents with asthma.

Dangers of Transition in Adolescents and Young Adults with Asthma

• Adolescents and young adults have diminished parental support and involvement.
• As they grow more independent they develop poor treatment adherence and see more changes in their environment and lifestyle.
• Inadequate transition readiness involves neglect or negative emotional reactions, poor communication skills, inadequate or lack of guidance and support from providers, and deficiencies in self-management knowledge and skills.
• Additionally there is a declining health among teens with chronic condition during transition. There are increased ED visits and associated healthcare costs.

Do you think an AI Agent could act as a  Peer or Friend?

Camp Cura's Benefits

• Improved accessibility to information and support                           
• Personalization
• Increased user engagement
• Data collection in real time
• Scalability

The Challenges

• Accuracy and adequacy
• Privacy and security
• User trust and acceptance
• Limited empirical evidence
• Integration with healthcare systems/workflows
• Resource intensive

Next Steps

• We want to continue developing the characters and further refine the AI modeling.
• Collect feedback by test it with adolescents and young adults with asthma.
• Scale it to address other diseases and conditions common in young adults.
• Explore the possibility of making it a multiplayer game.