A Mobile Smart Care platform Home spirometry by using the smartphone microphone

Mobile health (mHealth) applications are increasingly seen as cost-effective alternatives for hospital care. In this paper, it is investigated whether a smart phone microphone-based application can replace a more common differential-pressure spirometry sensor. Moreover, we investigate the steps that are needed to implement an application that uses a sensor to mimic another sensor, for which its high cost and its mobility limitations prohibit its use. Nowadays with the extended use of smart phones, people carry a set of sensors with them that can be used in many situations. Using these sensors for measurement (for which the sensors were initially not intended) gives us a huge variety of possibilities and might change the way mHealth and mobile phones are seen completely. The spirometry sensor is used for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and due to the way in which the health care market functions, very expensive. A smart phone application that can replace this sensor would be a cost-effective alternative. By using the smart phone’s built-in microphone and sound analysis algorithms we create a prototype of such an application. The application is tested among a group of patients and a control group to see if the outcome is acceptable, in order to use the application as a replacement of differential-pressure spirometry sensors.