A new phone app can provide a faster assessment of respiratory problems than the traditional method of counting breaths. (Photo credit: Karlen et al., 2014, via PLOS ONE)
A phone app that requires users to tap the screen after each breath can provide faster assessment of breathing problems, a new analysis shows.
Electrical engineers designed an app that measures the space between breaths and can provide a reasonable estimate of breathing rate in as little as 10 seconds. The traditional way to assess breathing rate – for example, during an asthma attack – is to count the number of breaths in 60 seconds, which can be too slow in situations where every second counts.
Original research paper published in the journal PLOS ONE on June 11, 2014.
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