I-Corps: A Wearable Platform for Assessing Respiratory Health

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.