Footnotes

• Funding Funding was received for the initial development of this asthma hazard QSAR prediction model from the Colt Foundation who is also supporting its further development.

• Ethics approval In this letter, we encourage physicians to consider using a computer-based prediction model to help them investigate the cause of clinical cases of occupational asthma where a novel chemical sensitiser is suspected. The use of this asthma hazard prediction programme to assist physicians in their clinical investigation of such cases has been approved for a formal evaluation in the UK by the University of Manchester Committee on the Ethics of Research on Human Beings. The North West NHS Research Ethics Committee deemed such work to be more akin to service evaluation rather than research and hence did not require formal ethical approval. We therefore do not anticipate any new ethical issues arising from the contents of this letter.

• Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; not externally peer reviewed.