Bateman 2000.

Methods	Study design: 12‐month parallel RCT Setting: practices in South Africa
Participants	Population: 135 participants were randomised to telemonitoring (68) or to control (67) Baseline characteristics Mean age (SD): NR % male: NR Inclusion criteria: people with moderate or severe asthma who had direct asthma‐related expenditure of > USD 150 during the preceding year Exclusion criteria: NR
Interventions	Intervention: PAP, a comprehensive computerised interactive guideline‐based clinical decision support system to which patients are linked telephonically by modem to permit daily monitoring of home spirometry and other clinical details by a healthcare coordinator. PAP provides the practitioner with regular status reviews and treatment recommendations, along with education for patients Control: Patients remained under the usual care of practitioners
Outcomes	Quality of life (Juniper scale), healthcare utilisation, direct costs of care
Notes	Funding: NR No full paper available, only conference abstract
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Described as randomised, but method used to generate the random sequence not described
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Unclear risk	No information regarding allocation concealment
Blinding of participants and personnel (performance bias) Objective outcomes	Low risk	It would not have been possible to hide allocation from participants and personnel, but it is unlikely that this would have introduced bias for objective outcomes (e.g. number of people having exacerbations)
Blinding of participants and personnel (performance bias) Subjective outcomes	High risk	Subjective outcomes such as quality of life and symptom scales filled in by participants or personnel may have been subject to performance bias
Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) All outcomes	High risk	It would have been possible to blind outcome assessors, but no information suggests this was done
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	Dropout not reported
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	High risk	Only an abstract was available with minimal information about methods and no useable outcome data relevant to the review
Other bias	Low risk	None noted