I-Corps: A Low-cost and Non-contact Respiration Monitoring Method for COVID-19 Screening and Prognosis

I-Corps项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是能够使用低成本和非接触式传感方法监测呼吸。研究表明，到2022年，实时健康监测设备的市场价值将超过650亿美元。鉴于生活方式相关疾病的高患病率，生理参数的长期连续监测对于许多医疗保健情况（例如呼吸暂停）和人机交互应用变得重要。该技术在当前COVID-19爆发中的预期益处包括但不限于帮助减少当前（昂贵且有限）呼吸监测医疗设备的负荷，可部署在开放空间中，并且对于急剧增加的COVID-19患者数量非常理想。此外，由于呼吸监测是医学中无处不在的元素，因此这项工作也可能影响整个医疗保健社区，从家中的患者到医生办公室，再到大型医疗机构和行业。该I-Corps项目涉及实现所提出的低成本和非接触式呼吸传感方法所需的技术进步。这种方法代表了与无线呼吸监测的传统方法的实质性偏离，并且准备在该领域做出重大贡献。鉴于COVID-19对全球的严重影响，拟议的技术是及时的。所提出的解决方案可充分部署在家庭环境（例如起居室）和医院等中，以远程监测呼吸用于COVID-19筛查和预后。所提出的方法允许非常低成本、安全、容易、连续和非侵入性地收集呼吸数据-这是对患有COVID-19和其他慢性呼吸疾病的受试者进行具有成本效益和积极主动的治疗和管理的关键输入。该项目将使该团队通过进行客户发现和访谈，更好地了解未满足的需求，开发一个可行的商业模式，并学习开发一个引人注目的最低可行产品所需的功能。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得支持的，通过评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the ability to monitor respiration using a low-cost and non-contact sensing method. Studies show that real-time health monitoring devices will reach a market value of over $65 billion by 2022. Given the high prevalence of lifestyle-associated disorders, long-term continuous monitoring of physiological parameters becomes important for many healthcare cases such as apnea and for human-computer-interaction applications. The anticipated benefits of the technology in the current COVID-19 outbreak include, but are not limited to, helping to reduce the load of current (expensive and limited) respiration monitoring medical equipment, being deployable in open-spaces and being highly desirable for the drastically increasing numbers of COVID-19 patients. Further, since respiration monitoring is a ubiquitous element of medicine, this work may also impact the entire health care community, from patients in their homes, to doctor’s offices, to large medical institutions and industries. This I-Corps project involves the technological advancement required to enable the proposed low-cost and non-contact respiration sensing method. This method represents a substantial departure from traditional approaches to wireless respiration monitoring and is poised to make significant contributions in this area. The proposed technology is timely given the critical worldwide impact of COVID-19. The proposed solution is adequately deployable in home environments (e.g. living rooms) and hospitals, etc. to remotely monitor respiration for COVID-19 screening and prognosis. The proposed approach allows very low-cost, safe, easy, continuous, and non-obtrusive gathering of respiration data — a critical input for cost-effective and proactive treatment and management of subjects with COVID-19 and other chronic respiratory conditions. This project will allow the team to better understand the unmet needs by conducting customer discoveries and interviews, develop a viable business model, and learn the desired features for developing a compelling minimum viable product.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.