PulmoBell: Home-based Pulmonary Rehabilitation Assistive Technology for People with COPD

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) can be fatal and is challenging to live with due to its severe symptoms. Pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) is one of the managements means to maintain COPD in a stable status. However, implementation of PR in the UK has been challenging due to the environmental and personal barriers faced by patients, which hinder their uptake, adherence, and completion of the programmes. Moreover, increased exercise capacity following PR does not always translate into physical activity (PA) and unfortunately, can lead back to exercise capacity seen prior to PR. Current alternative solutions using telerehabilitation methods have limitations on addressing these accessibility problems, and no clear conclusion can be drawn on the efficacy of telerehabilitation in enhancing the sustainability of PR outcomes via promoting PA in patients' everyday life. In this work, the authors propose a novel design of sensor-based assistive product with the aim of facilitating PR and promoting PA maintenance in a home-based setting. Prototypes of different levels of fidelity are presented, followed by an evaluation plan for future research directions.