Description

The Respiratory Oxygen Adherence Monitor (ROAM) system objectively determines the duration and pattern of adherence to oxygen therapy on a minute-by-minute basis and provides feedback of usage metrics to patients and their clinicians. The purpose of the ROAM monitor is, ultimately, to improve the clinical management of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and patients requiring long-term oxygen therapy (LTOT), to improve health outcomes in these patients, and to reduce costs that arise from the expensive and preventable exacerbations associated with patient non-adherence. The prevalence of COPD poses an enormous burden to the U.S. healthcare system. LTOT is a well-established treatment for patients with oxygen desaturation due to COPD and other cardiopulmonary diseases. The benefits of adequate adherence to LTOT are substantial both to COPD patients (in terms of reduced morbidity and mortality) and to society (in terms of healthcare cost savings). Despite these benefits, patient adherence to LTOT remains poor. The lack of a method to objectively and reliably quantify LTOT usage complicates the challenge of managing these patients. Furthermore, current adherence metrics (e.g., power-on time) fail to provide information regarding the timing of oxygen use within each 24-hour interval. The ROAM system combines several unobtrusive sensing modalities with adaptive algorithms that detect breathing. In this study, the team will develop a patient-ready product prototype targeted at improving patient LTOT adherence.