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As asthma is associated with an enormous social, psychological, and economic burden, various patient education programs have been developed to improve outcomes, including quality of life. The authors evaluated the effectiveness of community pharmacy-based interventions on lung function, health-related quality of life, and self-management in asthma patients in a 12-month controlled intervention study in 26 intervention and 22 control pharmacies. Pharmacies opted whether to take part as intervention or control pharmacies. According to this, patients (ages 18-65) with mild to severe asthma attending the pharmacies were allocated to the intervention (n = 161) or control group (n = 81), respectively. Intervention patients were educated on their disease, pharmacotherapy, and self-management; inhalation technique was assessed and, if necessary, corrected. Pharmaceutical care led to significantly improved inhalation technique. Asthma-specific quality of life and the mental health summary score of the SF-36 improved significantly in the intervention group. At 12 months, the intervention group showed significant improvements with regard to evening peak flow, self-efficacy, and knowledge.

In this paper we show how audience expectations towards what is presented on public displays can correlate with their attention towards these displays. Similar to the effect of Banner Blindness on the Web, displays for which users expect uninteresting content (e.g. advertisements) are often ignored. We investigate this effect in two studies. In the first, interviews with 91 users at 11 different public displays revealed that for most public displays, the audience expects boring advertisements and so ignores the displays. This was exemplified by the inclusion of two of our own displays. One, the iDisplay, which showed information for students, was looked at more often than the other (MobiDiC) which showed coupons for shops. In a second study, we conducted repertory grid interviews with 17 users to identify the dimensions that users believe to influence whether they look at public displays. We propose possible solutions to overcome this "Display Blindness" and increase audience attention towards public displays.