Building upon existing technology the team had previously developed, the $3.1 million grant will go toward an end goal of an affordable, accessible alternative to traditional lung measurements.
One in 12 people in the U.S. has asthma, equal to more than 27 million Americans, and Black Americans are twice as likely to suffer the disease than their white counterparts. In Pennsylvania, more than one million adults reported having asthma in 2021, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Other chronic respiratory conditions, such as cardio-obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and pneumonia, represent the sixth leading cause of death in the U.S.
"Lung diseases are very serious health problems, and they affect a lot of people," said Wei Gao, principal investigator for the project and associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Pitt's Swanson School of Engineering. "We want to allow people to monitor their lung function at home, just like they monitor their blood pressure, with some easy-to-use devices."
The device is called AWARE, or Acoustic WAveform Respiratory Evaluation, and uses a smartphone's existing technology to amplify signals and measure lung health. It has already been tested in human clinical trials, one of which ran from 2019 to 2023 at UPMC Children's Hospital and involved around 400 patients, many of whom were low-income.
"We have proven this has benefits," said Mr. Gao.
The accessory involves a plastic piece that attaches to the bottom of a smartphone and connects a plastic tube and mouthpiece a user breathes into. These pieces can be easily and cheaply 3D printed, he said.
The technology works similarly to how ships use sonar to sense objects underwater. Sonar technology emits a signal underwater, and that signal will hit an object and bounce back, giving sailors location information.
Healthy people and people with asthma inhale and exhale air at different capacities, emitting stronger or weaker breaths. The smartphone's speakers and microphones are transformed into sensing devices that detect characteristics of a person's inhale and exhale, like the amplitude or strength, and the breath's frequency. AWARE then analyzes those reflected signals using machine learning techniques to provide information about that person's lung health.
The grant, awarded to Mr. Gao's team and co-investigator Erick Forno, professor of pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine (and formerly of Pitt), came from the National Institutes of Health and National Heart, Lung, & Blood Institute and will last five years. It was officially awarded in May and was finalized for use earlier this month. The money will allow them to continue conducting clinical trials as well as develop additional engineering techniques to improve the device.
They also plan to develop sensing and artificial intelligence algorithms to help uncover more patterns from the signals.
"We're really excited about this research, and we believe this is going to be very useful to the public and help many patients," said Mr. Gao.
AWARE was previously supported by a $125,000 grant from the University of Pittsburgh Clinical and Translational Science Institute after it won an innovation contest in 2020. That money allowed the team to collect preliminary data, which was later used in the NIH grant proposal.
Mr. Gao said he is already in talks with select companies to discuss commercialization of the product, and another member of his team is in the process of applying for a medical device patent through the Food and Drug Administration.
"We expect this to be completed in the next couple years," he said.
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