Spirometry Application

The Client

Cipla is a global pharmaceutical company with a vision to deliver affordable healthcare globally. With this purpose in their hearts, their presence extends to  80+ countries providing over 1,500 products across various therapeutic categories in 50+ dosage forms. Their guiding principle, “Caring for Life” is always at the forefront of their work. They aim to build stronger roots in markets like India, South Africa, the U.S., and other economies of the emerging world.

The Challenge

Spirometry is a breathing test that measures the amount of air you inhale and exhale and your exhalation’s speed and easiness. It is central to diagnosing and managing chronic lung diseases like asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and cystic fibrosis. Clinics generally use conventional spirometers. However, home spirometry with portable devices is gaining acceptance nowadays. Its convenience allows patients and physicians to monitor lung functions requiring regular evaluation. The benefits of home spirometry include the earlier treatment of infliction, more rapid recovery, and reduced health care costs. However, it also has challenges such as high equipment costs, patient compliance, usability, difficulty in uploading results, etc. Moreover, these types of equipment do not offer proper coaching, feedback, and quality assurance as compared to clinical spirometry.

The Solution

To aid Cipla in its goal to find a solution for this challenge, Accubits offered end-to-end mobile app development services to develop an economical smartphone application that performs Peak Expiratory Flow Rate sensing, using the built-in microphone. This application offers an easy-to-use and intuitive process to evaluate your lung health right from your smartphone. This application requires users to hold the smartphone with the app at approximately an arm’s length. Then the user needs to breathe in for their full lung capacity and then forcefully exhale the entire breath at the phone screen. The phone’s microphone records the exhalation and sends audio data to a server that calculates the exhaled flow rate.

The flow rate is estimated by calculating the envelope of the sound in the time domain and by performing resonance tracking in the frequency domain while measuring white noise gain through linear prediction. It can compute and provide flow rates and graphs similar to a home or clinical spirometer. The app makes it easy for users to upload and track testing results and receive real-time alerts and notifications. The app can easily be coupled with symptom scores, cough sensing, or oximetry to provide a comprehensive disease self-management tool. This application does not require user-specific training. Its bespoke calibration can generate accurate results with negligible mean error. Though this application provides many benefits, it is not a substitute for clinical spirometry. Instead, it can be used as a home-based solution that can increase compliance and monitoring through the convenience of a mobile phone.