Respiratory Health Screening Using a Mobile Device

Respiratory diseases are a common cause of mortality and disability at the worldwide and national levels. Many of them are characterized by underdiagnosis and diagnosis in advanced stages of the disease, and in most of them, forced spirometry is one of the fundamental tools to assess the diagnosis and seriousness of the disease.

To help in improving the detection of respiratory diseases and the understanding of the respiratory health of the general population, one possible solution would be to develop a mobile application that could assess respiratory health by using the sound signal of exhaled air recorded by a mobile microphone.

This project will aim to validate a mobile application (WebApp) for the detection of pulmonary function disorders. It is planned to recruit 267 subjects, with and without respiratory disease, who are attended in pulmonary function laboratories of 10 Spanish hospitals, to compare the sensitivity of this application in the diagnosis of pulmonary function disorders (either obstructive patterns or PRISm) versus the gold standard (spirometry). Ease of use and user satisfaction with the application will also be assessed.