Coupled Mobile Phone Platform With Peak Flow Meter Enables Real-Time Lung Function Assessment

Abstract

Asthma is a disease that affects over 300 million people worldwide and is disproportionately observed in the developing world where air pollution is sometimes more prevalent. This disease can range in severity, causing the airways of the lungs to constrict and inflame, and no known therapies can completely and permanently ameliorate the disease's effects on the respiratory system. Doctors can, however, treat most chronic and acute asthma symptoms with medication regimens. It is therefore important to develop accurate devices to monitor the disease symptoms so doctors can take appropriate steps to treat the patient with proper medication. One effective way to track asthma symptoms is to monitor a patient's peak expiratory flow (PEF). There are presently many different handheld PEF monitors commercially available, and these suffer from a variety of different limitations. Many current PEF meters are inaccurate, inconvenient to use, bulky, expensive, and rarely include real-time data plotting capabilities. We have created a user-friendly, accurate, and moderately inexpensive external mobile device accessory that records and stores the user's PEF, and graphs this data over time. We also have created a custom software interface to forward this stored data electron- ically. E-mail forwarding and "telemedicine" capabilities will give physicians a better way to monitor the patient's PEF over time, leading to a more convenient method for physicians to make appropriate changes in patient medication regimens.