Storm ID, Altair Medical and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde develop a respiratory monitoring service for COVID-19 patients

Scottish digital transformation consultancy Storm ID has developed a new digital solution to help predict respiratory failure in COVID-19 patients. The solution is being trialled in respiratory failure patients, following funding from Scottish Government Chief Scientist Office.

A key challenge faced by hospitals in the coronavirus pandemic is the need to monitor an unprecedented number of patients. This is made more challenging by the fact that patients with COVID-19  are at risk of sudden deterioration. Respiratory rate and breathing events are a key predictor of deterioration but, until now, hospitals have been unable to monitor patient respiratory health remotely or at scale.

Storm ID is partnering with NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and Altair Medical to develop a remote respiratory monitoring solution. The COVID-19 Advanced Respiratory Physiological platform (CARP, clinicaltrials.gov NCT04668313) will help clinicians monitor patients continuously once they’ve left direct care.

CARP will use Altair Medical’s wearable sensor and respiratory algorithms in conjunction with a clinical dashboard, made possible by Storm ID’s Lenus Health Platform, to gather patient respiratory data. The Lenus Health Platform allows the de-identified trial data to be aggregated for machine-learning analyses, to develop risk predictive models in-silico. If subsequent effectiveness trials proved the utility of these models, CARP would provide the infrastructure for clinicians to identify and triage at-risk patients in real-time.

The project is funded by the University of Glasgow as part of the Chief Scientist Office (CSO) Rapid Research in COVID-19 programme.

Paul McGinness, Director at Storm ID said:
Our Lenus Health Platform supports remote patient monitoring and so it was only natural for us to look at how this could be made available to COVID-19 patients. The CARP solution will provide a basis for exploring how the NHS can use this innovative sensor to proactively monitor patients.

Dr Chris Carlin, Consultant Physician at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said:
CARP will provide us with critical, real-time capability to identify and triage COVID-19 patients at risk of deterioration. This will greatly assist clinicians as patient numbers increase.

Dr Bruce Henderson, CEO of Altair Medical said:
The CARP trial has allowed unique insights into the effects of COVID-19 and the data analysis methods developed will enhance the use of Altair Medical’s technology in a range of respiratory conditions. This would not have been possible without the Lenus Health Platform – it provides a pivotal link in safely and securely maximising the real-world utility of biosensor data.

About Storm ID and Lenus Health

Storm ID is a digital transformation delivery partner for the healthcare sector.

It developed the Lenus Health Platform to support delivery of new digital health services that are continuous, preventative and participatory, helping to transform care pathways for a range of long-term conditions.

Lenus enables patient generated health data from digital technologies and consumer health tech such as apps, sensors and wearables to be shared with healthcare professionals and machine learning models to provide decision support, enabling targeted interventions to happen in the community. It’s also designed to support services that will help reduce unnecessary and expensive hospital admissions including face-to-face appointments, improve patient engagement with their own health and wellbeing and reduce duplication and unnecessary processes through user managed access to patient data.

About Altair Medical

Altair Medical’s Respmeter is designed to monitor breathing in real-time, alerting you, your household members, or emergency services where life-threatening changes occur. This level of monitoring is normally only available in hospitals where doctors and nurses directly monitor your breathing. Altair’s technology uses Artificial Intelligence to accurately monitor large numbers of patients in any location at any time. Performance characteristics are not yet established.

About NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde is one of 14 regional NHS Boards in Scotland, serving a population of 1.14 million and employing around 39,000 staff. It is the largest NHS organisation in Scotland and one of the largest in the UK with 35 hospitals, 50 health centres and clinics and an annual budget of £3.1billion.