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 <2 s (after finding the BLE of the device and adding the device's ID), time to deliver the collected data of one day <3 minutes), 3. Processing data and generating a prediction, 4. Comparison of sensor data with the station data for air pollution, expecting less than 5% deviation, and 5. Test the durability of the system, hardware (battery, sensors, package/housing), and software (codes, storing data, network connectivity) for long use without malfunctioning, and 6. Use the System Usability Scale (SUS) Test with a score > 70% as an acceptable milestone. Our product is expected to reduce the risk and cost of hospitalization by focusing on remote patient management, early identification, and prevention. It will allow healthcare providers to keep an eye on their high-risk patients in between clinic visits and help prevent COPD from worsening and hospital stays while allowing patients to stay in contact with their doctors and make healthy lifestyle changes.