Nearly two million residents of private households in the U.K. were experiencing Long COVID symptoms as of January 2023, and more than nine million more were living with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD). These patients, and others with pulmonary distress, may soon have an easier time managing and monitoring their conditions if test trials of a new respiratory app prove successful. The mobile app is scheduled for two pilot studies in May using outpatients from North London’s Royal Free Hospital and local doctors’ offices.*

The Lungy Health app

The Lungy Health app is a result of a joint effort by University College London and Pi-a, a London-based health-tech startup. The mobile app has two unique functions:

• Breathing exercise instruction
• Real-time monitoring of breathing progress

Done properly, breathing exercises are a simple and effective method of improving overall health. With at-home breath monitoring, in-person checkups and therapy can be reduced, say the app developers.  

About 20% of U.K. adults have respiratory symptoms from conditions such as Long COVID, COPD, and asthma, affecting patient quality of life and costing the U.K. National Health Service billions of dollars annually. Lead developer Luke Hale saw an opportunity to do some good. “This app has been developed to be hugely scalable and accessible to everyone,” he said, “so any patient with a smartphone can access it and use the technology.”

Professor Tony Young, Ph.D., NHS England’s National Clinical Director for Innovation, said he’s “very excited” about the app’s potential to help ease the enormous respiratory disease burden on the NHS “by empowering patients to monitor and self-manage their condition at home.”

Features and Benefits

To help the user relax and stay interested, the app has a variety of visuals as it takes the person through the breathing process. Hale says the app’s breathing exercises provide a number of therapeutic benefits, such as:

• Easier breathing (fewer complications)
• Stronger breathing muscles
• Greater exercise capacity
• Fewer chest infections
• Less stress and anxiety
• Increased mindfulness

To measure breathing progress accurately and consistently, the app uses a combination of phone camera and microphone that records detailed data.

According to Hale, an earlier wellness prototype of the app that focused on lowering stress and anxiety with breathing exercises has been a success, with thousands of downloads and a 4.9-star rating since December. This bodes well, he said, for adoption of the breath technology in the final Lungy app. 

If confirmed in the test trials, the app could not only provide more people with breathing exercises but could also help motivate people to stay with those exercises. Right now, most pulmonary patients are only given a single in-person meeting with a therapist and then a worksheet of exercises to do on their own, which can be hard to stick to. 

The app wouldn’t be used to diagnose a lung condition but could detect deterioration of a condition early on, as well as show improvement.

Growing interest

Hale said his company has had interest in the breath recognition smartphone technology from U.S. firms wanting to use it in their own platforms. This could enable the tech to grow much faster and even drive many other applications.

*Bawden, T. (2023, March 19). How a new app could help ten million Britons with long Covid, asthma and COPD. iNews. https://inews.co.uk/news/science/new-app-help-long-covid-asthma-copd-2217089