UltraSonic Spirometer for Home Monitoring of Asthma Patients

描述(由申请人提供)：Koronis Biomedical Technologies Corporation(KBT)建议开发一种针对哮喘患者的家庭监测的肺活量计设备。在监测哮喘患者的肺功能方面，肺活量测定仪与峰值流量计相比有很好的优势，但目前的肺活量测定仪解决方案并不适用于家庭监测应用。它们需要昂贵的校准组件才能提供准确的结果，因为它们对空气流量传感传感器的制造变化和肺活量计口的制造变化具有不必要的敏感性。这一校准要求对潜在的家庭用户具有重大影响，包括巨大的维护负担和复杂的使用要求。超声波气流技术不容易受到这些限制的影响，因为不像目前的技术从压力传感器推断空气流量，超声波技术直接测量空气流量。在这个项目中，KBT将为家庭管理市场开发一种低维护、易用的超声波肺活仪。该设备将具有集成的蓝牙无线接口，可以方便地将肺活量测试结果传输到互联网连接设备，以便传输给医生和呼吸治疗师，或传输到谷歌健康和微软健康保险等个人健康服务。这个第一阶段项目的目标是建立和测试一个超声波肺活计的原型，并开发一个智能手机应用程序来跟踪结果并将其传输到Google Health。该系统的效用将通过肺活量准确性测试以及与具有哮喘监测和患者家庭管理专业知识的医生和呼吸治疗师进行的最终用户研究来确定。 与公共健康相关：传感器技术的最新进展使为家庭监测而优化的肺活量计得以开发。超声波流量测量的引入使我们能够创造出一种维护成本低、使用方便的肺活量计。这项创新将极大地降低每次测试的成本，并将立即产生影响，引入诊断性肺活量测定法，用于哮喘和其他患者的家庭监测。这款先进的肺活量计将利用无线通信技术开发一种针对家庭监控应用进行优化的零技能肺活量计。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Koronis Biomedical Technologies Corporation (KBT) proposes to develop a spirometer device targeted toward home-based monitoring of asthma patients. Spirometry has well established advantages over peak flow meters for the monitoring of pulmonary function in asthma patients, yet current spirometer solutions are not optimized for home monitoring applications. They require expensive calibrated components to provide accurate results due unwanted sensitivities to manufacturing variations in their air-flow sensing sensors and to manufacturing variations in spirometer mouthpieces. This calibration requirement has dramatic implications for potential home users, including significant maintenance burdens and complicated usage requirements. Ultrasonic air-flow technology is not susceptible to these limitations because unlike current technology, which infers air-flow from pressure sensors, ultrasonic techniques directly measure air-flow rates. In this project KBT will develop a low- maintenance easy-to-use ultrasonic spirometer for the home management market. The device will feature an integrated Bluetooth wireless interface to enable the convenient transmission of spirometer test results to Internet connected devices for transmission to medical doctors and respiratory therapists, or to personal health services like Google Health and Microsoft Health Vault. The objective of this phase I project is to build and test a prototype ultrasonic spirometer and develop a smartphone application to track the results and transfer them to a Google Health. The utility of the system will be determined via spirometric accuracy tests and an end-user study conducted with medical doctors and respiratory therapists with expertise in asthma monitoring and home management of patients. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Recent advances in sensor technology enable the development of a spirometer optimized for in-home monitoring. The introduction of ultrasonic flow metering allows the creation of a low-maintenance easy-to-use spirometer. This innovation will dramatically lower the cost per test and will have the immediate impact of introducing diagnostic spirometry for in-home monitoring to asthma and other patients. This advanced spirometer will leverage wireless communication technology to enable the development of a zero-skill spirometer optimized for home monitoring applications.