STTR Phase I: A Mobile Triage Application for Reducing the Risk of COPD Exacerbations

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) project is the reduction of significant disease flare-ups in patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), increase in patient quality-of-life, and a reduction of expensive and unnecessary healthcare utilization. Current at-home care support for COPD patients is often completely missing or consists of action plans that fail to provide effective, individualized care. The alternative solution under development in this project is an easy-to use, personalized mobile application that catches disease degeneration early, tracks patient health history, and provides decision support to guide patients to the right medical care at the right time. COPD is one of the leading chronic conditions driving potentially avoidable hospital admissions. Pairing a mobile health management app with a smart triage system that provides instant healthcare guidance has the potential to dramatically reduce unnecessary COPD hospitalization and provide long-term maintenance treatment of COPD symptoms. Moreover, an easily accessible, highly accurate, convenient solution can empower patients to make better health decisions early. This STTR Phase I project proposes to demonstrate positive impact and adoption of a mobile triage application for COPD patients. To date, a set of triage algorithms has been built and validated on simulated patient cases. The algorithms exhibited performance that is comparable to or better than a panel of board-certified pulmonologists. The next vital step is to establish the technical feasibility of a packaged, stand-alone mobile application. This research will focus on developing a fully featured prototype that is optimized for adoption, retention, and efficacy. A mix of user feedback and rigorous usage analysis collected through human testing will provide necessary insights on barriers to use, missing functionality, and consumer value. Standardized markers of health safety, symptom escalations, and patient quality-of-life will be used as metrics of product performance. Moreover, all data and conclusions will be subjected to peer review through publication and public presentations. As an additional objective, the accuracy of the algorithmic triage recommendations will be tested on real patient cases to further validate their accuracy and effectiveness. The anticipated result of the phase I procedure is demonstration that the app is safe (objective 1), operationally sound and optimal (phase 2), and valuable to consumers (objective 3). This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.