Acute asthma is a common presentation to emergency departments. Consensus and evidence based guidelines for the assessment and management of asthma indicators are widely available. However adherence to such guidelines and indicators has been shown to be variable, resulting in gaps between current evidence and clinical practice. This has implications for the quality of care delivered by emergency departments. These discrepancies manifest in suboptimal management strategies such as underprescription of corticosteroids, underutilised asthma management plans and inappropriate imaging.

ACAFE aims to address the issues mentioned above by developing and implementing an emergency department electronic interface that facilitates standardized clinical documentation and management based on current asthma management guidelines and indicators.

The ACAFE system will be a major step in bridging the gap between evidence and practice for emergency departments thus improving the quality of patient care.