‘Smart Shirts’ Measuring Daily Lung Function May Help Monitor COPD, Other Respiratory Conditions

“Smart shirts are already available, but they tend to be used by professional or amateur sportsmen and women,” Mannée said. “We wanted to see whether a smart shirt could provide an accurate and more practical alternative for measuring lung function.”

To test this hypothesis, the researchers had 15 healthy participants (without a respiratory disease) complete a series of tasks mimicking everyday living — lying down, sitting, standing, climbing stairs, and vacuuming — while wearing a smart shirt (brand name Hexoskin) and traditional monitoring equipment (which involves a backpack and face mask). Each task was performed twice by the participants to test the reproducibility of the results.

The researchers found that measurements obtained via the smart shirt and traditional equipment were generally quite similar. Variation between the two was 0.2% on average — about 2.4 mL of air — when the participants were lying down. The difference was slightly greater for demanding tasks; for instance, it was 3.1% on average, or about 40 mL of air, when the participants were vacuuming.

“These results are important because they indicate that the smart shirt can be worn by patients while they go about their daily lives to accurately measure their lung function,” Mannée said.

Of note, calibrations for the first use of the smart shirt could not be reliably used for the second set of measurements, which suggests that, in practice, the equipment would need to be re-calibrated every time it is used.

“Ultimately, we want to improve patients’ quality of life,” said Mannée. “If we can accurately monitor patients’ symptoms while they go about their normal activities, we might be able to spot problems and treat them sooner, and this in turn could mean less time in hospital.”

The researchers are now planning to conduct a similar study in people with COPD.

“Smart shirt technology offers a promising, though relatively expensive, tool for monitoring patients’ respiratory health status during normal activities in a way that does not interfere too much with their daily lives,” said Thierry Troosters, from University Hospitals Leuven in Belgium, who is president-elect of the European Respiratory Society and was not involved in the study. “We look forward to seeing more work into this area of respiratory research.”