I-Corps: A Wearable Platform for Assessing Respiratory Health

I-Corps项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是开发可穿戴平台，该平台将在临床环境和外部环境中增加对呼吸健康数据的访问。虽然呼吸直接受到呼吸系统疾病的影响，但传统的呼吸监测技术只能在临床环境中提供呼吸系统健康的简短快照，并且强烈依赖医疗保健专业人员的专业知识。为了改善健康结果，需要使用非侵入性工具，方便获取呼吸系统健康数据，增加早期发现疾病的可能性，改善患者监测，并提高远程医疗的有效性。拟议的技术预计将有利于医疗保健结果，并减轻与呼吸系统疾病相关的经济负担。这些好处可能会在服务不足的农村、低收入和少数民族社区中得到最强烈的感受，这些社区获得专业护理和设施的机会有限。如果推向市场，这项技术还可能有助于支持美国新兴的柔性混合电子制造行业，并可能颠覆防护口罩行业。I-Corps项目的基础是开发可穿戴式呼吸健康监测平台。该技术将柔性电子呼吸健康传感器集成到轻型口罩中。一个可重复使用的电子模块包括无线数据传输到智能手机。人工智能分析可以对呼吸模式和用户活动进行上下文敏感的评估。该智能口罩能够在日常生活条件下无创采集呼吸数据，为人工智能训练、测试和鲁棒模式识别提供丰富的数据集。反过来，人工智能功能提升了传感器的实用性，使其超越了信号监测，能够自主诊断检测与疾病或用户痛苦相关的异常呼吸。此外，拟议的平台技术可以改善慢性阻塞性肺疾病（COPD）和睡眠呼吸暂停的早期诊断，保护和监测对森林火灾或烟雾造成的空气污染敏感的弱势群体，保护和监测危险制造环境中的工人，保护和监测COVID或流感病毒爆发期间的人群，远程患者监测远程医疗，呼吸训练有助于康复和缓解压力。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of a wearable platform that will increase access to respiratory health data, in both clinical settings and outside such settings. Although breathing is directly impacted by respiratory disease, conventional respiratory monitoring technologies offer only a brief snapshot of respiratory health in a clinical setting, with a strong reliance on the expertise of healthcare professionals. To improve health outcomes, there is a need for non-invasive tools that facilitate access to respiratory health data, increase the likelihood of early disease detection, improve patient monitoring, and enhance the effectiveness of telemedicine. The proposed technology is expected to benefit healthcare outcomes and ease the economic burdens associated with respiratory disease. Such benefits will likely be felt most strongly in underserved rural, low-income, and minority communities with limited access to specialist care and facilities. If brought to market, this technology also may help support the emerging flexible hybrid electronics manufacturing sector in the US and potentially disrupt the protective facemask industry. This I-Corps project is based on the development of a wearable platform for respiratory health monitoring. The proposed technology integrates a flexible electronic respiratory health sensor into a lightweight facemask. A reusable electronics module includes wireless data transmission to a smartphone. Artificial intelligence analysis enables context-sensitive assessment of breathing patterns and user activity. The smart mask enables the non-invasive acquisition of respiratory data under daily life conditions, providing rich data sets for AI training, testing, and robust pattern identification. The AI capabilities, in turn, elevate the utility of the sensors beyond signal monitoring, to enable autonomous diagnostics for detecting anomalous breathing associated with disease or user distress. In addition, the proposed platform technology may improve early diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and sleep apnea, protection and monitoring of vulnerable populations that are sensitive to air pollution caused by forest fires or smog, protection and monitoring of workers in hazardous manufacturing environments, protection and monitoring of populations during viral outbreaks of COVID or flu, remote patient monitoring for telemedicine, and breath training for rehabilitation and stress relief.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.