Smartphone App
Measures Respiratory Rate to
Help Detect Pneumonia in Children
Monitoring children’s breathing
Rate is commonly done simply by using a stopwatch, but it turns out that just about any
Smartphone can be a perfect
Respiratory monitor. Researchers from BC Children’s Hospital and the University of British Columbia have developed an app that simply asks the user to tap the touchscreen every time the patient breathes in. The app in turn calculates the breathing
Rate and displays it on the screen along with an animation of a breathing child, to
Help make sure the calculated breathing
Rate matches what the person is seeing.
In a study of children’s breathing, the app provided accurate results after roughly ten seconds of counting, while the manual stopwatch method requires a full minute to perform. The researchers plan to combine the app with the
Phone Oximeter pulse oximeter they developed a few years ago to create a cheap and mobile tool for
Pneumonia detection.
Study in
PLoS ONE:*
Improving the Accuracy and Efficiency of Respiratory Rate Measurements in Children Using Mobile Devices…
Link:*
New mobile app from CFRI, UBC researchers provides faster, more accurate measurement of respiratory rate…
