We’ve developed a sticker that can detect when a patient's breathing rate deteriorates, giving clinicians vital time to give the treatment they need.

Key Facts

• Common chronic respiratory diseases, including asthma, sleep apnoea, and COPD, currently affect more than 435 million people around the world.

• Changes in breathing rate can often be the first sign of patient deterioration but can be missed, as the only way to monitor it is to count the number of breaths a patient takes in a minute.

• We have developed a wearable ‘sticker’ that can accurately monitor and detect changes in people’s breathing – even when not in direct contact with the skin. 

• The PneumoRator® has been made possible by almost £1 million in funding from the NIHR.

Wearable breathing monitor

Changes in breathing rate can often be the first sign a patient is deteriorating. In life-threatening diseases like sepsis, it is vital to spot this early.

The current way to monitor breathing rate is for a nurse to manually count the number of breaths a patient takes in a minute. Continually doing this on busy wards is not realistic.

We have developed a wearable device like a sticker, which measures breathing rate over long periods of time and has the potential to warn clinicians when something isn’t right.

Trial testing

The technology is called the PneumoRator® and is thought to be the first of its kind. It has several functional layers and works by measuring the capacitance variation of the sensor caused by breathing. It takes into account the subtle variations of breathing due to chest expansion or changes in lung composition. 

It was tested in a clinical trial led by Professor Neil White and Dr Harry Akerman, involving 50 people undergoing surgery at UHS. The sensor’s performance was same to both manual breath counting and capnography, a monitoring technique that measures the level of carbon dioxide a person breathes out.

The device has been specifically designed to be easy to use in hospital or at home. It can measure a person’s respiratory rate over long periods of time, allowing trends to be observed. It has been developed at a low-cost.  

Award-winning collaboration

We have developed the technology working alongside scientists at Nottingham Trent University and Zelemiq Ltd, a medical technology design and consultancy firm.

Its potential was celebrated when it won the won the Healthcare and Medical Award at The Engineer's Collaborate to Innovate (C2I) Awards.