Virtual Care Assessment of Respiration for Patients with Long COVID

Research Objectives: To develop and validate a method for remotely monitoring respiration parameters for patients with Long COVID using the ProMote virtual care platform in Alberta Canada.

Design: Face-to-face assessment of respiration relies upon observation, touch and when necessary pulmonary function testing. In remote and rural communities this expertise is in very short supply. This region has a population of nearly 0.5 million serving a land mass of 448,500 sq. km. For patients recovering with Long COVID access to respiratory care is very challenging and inequitable. Our virtual care platform at 14 rural clinical centers across Alberta, has the potential to provide this support but required a means to monitor respiration rate, depth and pattern of breathing. This co-design, co-development project was undertaken in close collaboration with rural clinicians, respiratory therapists and an industry partner.

Setting: A hub and spoke model with rural health centres in Alberta Canada working alongside the Edmonton Breathe Easy team.

Participants: Having completed validation this project is ready for implementation at two rural sites to pilot test the virtual care model.

Interventions: A wireless respiration sensor has been developed in collaboration with Sensoria Inc (Redmond WA) to simultaneously monitor chest and diaphragmatic breathing patterns.

Main Outcome Measures: Both clinicians and patients evaluate the assessment, the clinicians using a simple questionnaire and the patients EQ5D.

Results: The sensor has been validated using a marker-based monition capture system (Optitrack Trio) to accurately measure the stretch in the belt during a range of breathing exercises. The respiration belt and e-stethoscope are paired to a mobile app and then transmitted via Zoom to the hub clinicians thereby who observe a real-time plot of both breathing patterns. A markerless motion capture system is used to quantify functions that initiate breathing patterns recorded.

Conclusions: A wireless respiration sensor can be incorporated into a virtual care platform to enable the respiration patterns of Long COVID patients to be monitored remotely by expert clinicians at urban hub clinics.

Author(s) Disclosures: No conflicts of interest.