Nottingham, UK based Footfalls and Heartbeats has developed a first-of-its-kind textile respiration monitoring band, unlocking access to patient adoption and compliance not possible until now in healthcare. The band’s textile nature removes the barriers to traditional monitoring systems, whilst providing accuracy of up to 97.4%, according to Simon McMaster, the company’s Founder.

“Despite significant interest and evidence supporting the use of respiration monitoring, it is yet to find widespread adoption within sport or remote monitoring healthcare applications,” explains McMaster.

White paper

Footfalls has published a revealing white paper - ‘Knitted Band for Continuous Respiration Monitoring’ - to support its claims.

“This white paper outlines the role of respiration in the human body, and why it is such a useful physiological marker. The uses and applications within a multitude of health and fitness scenarios are discussed. Further note is made of the current technologies used in the sectors above,” McMaster says.

It is my opinion that this new technology is the start of a paradigm shift in true remote monitoring

The white paper goes on to outline and validate Footfall’s Respiration Band, which offers all of the comfort of a textile, alongside the robust and reliable signal quality required to access the information needed.

Two protocols are outlined to assess the systems performance: the first takes place with participants sitting still whilst the second requires participants to adopt common sleeping positions. The results validate the capability of the sensor to sense and recognise the wearers respiration in these conditions.

Unparalleled insights

An individual’s respiration offers unparalleled insights, whether that be in the monitoring and improving of their fitness, or for understanding and diagnosing various health conditions, according to Footfalls.

“In recent years a wide variety of different respiration monitoring technologies and techniques have been developed to try and gain access to these parameters with varying levels of success and adoption. Despite their ever-increasing use, widespread adoption of respiration monitoring, outside of clinical environments particularly, has not yet been achieved,” Simon McMaster explains.

“Footfalls have designed a comfortable textile Respiration Band validated for data collection at home and whilst sleeping. The Band alongside Footfalls’ proprietary algorithms have been proven to recognise breaths of the wearer, allowing for the calculation of accurate respiration rate and the reliable recognition of breathing irregularities.”

Paradigm shift

“It is my opinion that this new technology is the start of a paradigm shift in true remote monitoring. It is comfortable (knitted), invisible (can be hidden under clothing) and it will provide continuous data to measure respiration for all humanity at a price point that makes healthcare affordable for all. The continuous data is very significant. From one 8-hour sleep session we collect 16MB of data which is unique to that user,” concludes McMaster.

Download the ‘Knitted Band for Continuous Respiration Monitoring’ white paper

www.footfallsandheartbeats.com