I-Corps: A Home-based Solution for Remote Lung Function Monitoring for Patients with Chronic Lung Disease

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of an improved measurement tool for remote lung function monitoring. Chronic lung disease impacts 10% of the United States population and nearly 80% of rural residents live in a "healthcare desert," with a limited number of overall healthcare providers, poor access to specialty care, large geographic distances between residents and hospitals, and socioeconomic challenges that provide barriers to accessing frequent care. Urban populations and U.S. veterans share many of these challenges. Current remote lung monitoring technologies lack sensitivity, effective reporting options and ease of use. Tools that leverage telemedicine in the lung health space along with higher-sensitivity lung monitoring tools have the potential to address these challenges. The proposed technology may provide the first head-to-head comparison of home-based gas washout technology, which is superior in the clinical setting, to standard-of-care home diagnostics and provide the rationale for future development of these technologies. The potential impact is high, given the large number of individuals that may benefit from improved home monitoring, physician dissatisfaction with current home-based solutions, and the number of patients that are currently underserved, including pediatric populations, rural populations, and underserved urban populations. This I-Corps project is based on the development of a solution for remote lung health monitoring. In the current healthcare model, most lung diagnostic measurements are made in the clinic or hospital. As a result, they are often made infrequently or in reaction to worsening symptoms. Spirometers and peak flow meters are widely available for home use but use forced exhalation maneuvers that are highly dependent on a patient's effort and can be highly variable. Gas washout methods sensitively and accurately measure the key elements of worsening lung disease - airway volume, airway homogeneity, and lung volume - that are recognized as superior to measurements based on forced exhalations. Until now, gas washout measurements have only been available in large medical centers because they require bulky equipment and externally supplied gases. To address these shortcomings, the proposed technology translates the principles underlying clinic-based gas washout to a home-based system, without the need for supplied gas tanks, and where measurement data can be reported back to a clinician’s office. Currently, home-based diagnostics are an insufficient supplement because home-based diagnostics include poorly sensitive methods, the requirement that patients keep a paper record, and the lack of integration of the information into the medical record. This technology may overcome these limitations by offering a superior diagnostic test that records data longitudinally and transmits these data to a clinician for review. 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.