A Stand Alone Wearable for Tracking Environmental Exposure and Evaluating Respiratory Response

PROJECT SUMMARY

Every year, 1.5 million emergency room visits are COPD exacerbates. Lack of remote patient management and

telehealth primes most COPD patients to visit the emergency room and be admitted to the hospital. The health

and economic burden of these visits’ costs more than $24 billion annually. Remote patient management in COPD

can prompt treatment, prevent symptoms from worsening, lead to healthy lifestyle changes, and improve patient

outcomes. We are developing a novel product that can make quality healthcare more accessible and

convenient, allowing healthcare providers to manage more patients, reduce the risk of hospitalization through

prompt treatment (remote patient monitoring) by focusing on prevention over treatment, and reduce the overall

healthcare cost. Our product is a stand-alone environmental exposure and lung health monitoring system

designed to measure personal exposure to pollutants and triggers to respiratory distress, assess respiratory

functions, and transfer data to healthcare providers for early intervention, patient management, and

medication adjustment. This product allows physicians to receive alerts when a patient's reading is too high

and keep an eye out for at-risk patients for quick action to prevent symptoms from worsening and better

medical decision-making while enabling patients to engage in healthier lifestyle choices. The main objective

of the proposed research to be completed within phase I is to advance prototype I into an intelligent

version with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity to instantly transfer data to a patient's smartphone and

healthcare professionals for daily assessment and patient monitoring. The advanced and intelligent version

will be miniaturized in weight, size, and power consumption for easy use and tested by focus groups for

comments on durability and usability. We will achieve the following metrics of success before advancing to phase

II: 1. Compare the performance of the product's finalized design with Lab test equipment (sensors) data after

calibration, 2. Evaluate the speed in data transfer and connectability in software (connection speed