The device successfully diagnosed COPD in patients with 90% accuracy
Samay has announced positive results that showed that its artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted wearable technology device, Sylvee, accurately diagnosed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in patients.
The US start-up’s passive remote monitoring platform and its wearable device delivered a near equivalence to the current standard pulmonary function test (PFT).
COPD, a chronic respiratory condition that affects the lungs, is the third leading cause of death worldwide and is estimated to affect 12.5 million people in the US.
Conducted in partnership with the Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Disorders Institute of South Florida, US, 110 patients living with COPD, asthma and health controls were tested using its AI-assisted system and wearable.
Worn on the chest for 24 hours a day, Sylvee uses tiny speakers and microphones to project sound into the lungs and identify returning signals – acoustic resonance – to indicate serious lung disease.
The device is also able to monitor lung function over time using measures including lung volume, capacity and rate of flow to produce a comprehensive overview of a patient’s condition.
The wearable is designed to pair with the Sylvee mobile app and a research portal.
When measuring lung acoustic resonance in patients, the wearable successfully detected ‘air trapping’, an early predictor of COPD exacerbations, with 83% accuracy in comparison to the current standard hospital PFTs.
Additionally, with 90% accuracy, Sylvee diagnosed patients with COPD and registered statistically significant associations in medication efficacy during pre- and post-bronchodilation PFTs, a test used to determine the reversibility of air flow limitations after administration of a short-acting bronchodilator drug as part of PFTs.
Maria Artunduaga, founder and chief executive officer at Samay, hopes that Sylvee will “enable clinicians to intervene early and monitor frequent exacerbators closely, successfully, decreasing hospitalisations” as it “captures pulmonary function data, including early COPD diagnostic biomarkers and predictors of exacerbations”.
Findings from the study are set to be published once additional patient data is available, Samay said.
