Objective remote monitoring of shortness-of-breath in COPD patients

For COPD-patients, adequate remote monitoring is key to predict and prevent so-called exacerbations (flare-ups of symptoms) which may lead to harmful and costly hospitalisations, and can be avoided by intervention with corticosteroids and/or antibiotics. The problem is huge: in Europe and the US there are approximately 53 million people suffering from COPD corresponding to 66B€ of annual healthcare costs. Shortness-of-breath, the primary assessment signal for COPD patients, is today hardly and poorly monitored: it is either graded visually by a doctor, or graded by the patient itself on a scale of 0-10. We solve the underlying long standing problem: the absence of a device to objectively, frequently, and remotely measure the respiration pattern of a patient. Our technology is based on measuring the pressure-variations in the nose of a patient during two minutes of normal breathing twice a day by means of a standard nasal cannula, and converting these pressure data into medically recognised flow-volume curves. Two clinical studies in 3 hospitals in the Netherlands indicate that exacerbations can be detected or predicted in time. This can have a large impact on the healthcare system.