Respiratory health is deteriorating day by day globally due to an increased exposure to certain risk factors such as pollution, smoking and passive lifestyle. Although in general the respiratory diseases can be kept under control, there is still a need for better phenotyping and management of lung diseases such as COPD and Asthma. The conventional Lung Function Tests like spirometry don’t provide any regional information and have limited sensitivity to detect changes in pulmonary function in an early stage because the healthy areas in the lung compensate for a progressive disease making it undetectable. There is a need to shift to a better technology which can look at the overall lung health.
The Wheezometer device is an ultrasound-based cough detector using ARM technology that fits against a patient’s neck, automatically detecting coughs and counts coughing events by detecting both high and low frequency mechanical vibrations in the tracheal area, and then tracking their severity and duration. The device then stores that data or sends it wirelessly to a computer or other logging device. Just 30 seconds of breath sounds are sufficient to use the advanced signal processing algorithms to detect, quantify, and objectively document the presence of wheeze and its extent.
