Description:
Reference #: 01323
The University of South Carolina is offering licensing opportunities for Combining Pulmonary Function Test Data with Other Clinical Data
Background:
According to the Centers for Disease Control there are approximately 25 million Americans with asthma and 15 million Americans with COPD. COPD is the third most common cause of death in the USA. Direct health care expenditures for COPD are approximately $30 billion annually. This includes almost 7 million visits to the emergency departments alone. This invention would be an important advance in the diagnosis and medical management of this very large population of patients that consume a great deal of healthcare resources.
Invention Description:
This invention will combine digital lung information from pulmonary function tests (PFT) with ultrasound and/or other clinical devices to better diagnosis and manage patients with potential lung problems. The combined data will be available for display to the healthcare provider in real-time and/or recorded for later review. It can also be analyzed by artificial intelligence and deep learning to enhance diagnostic accuracy and patient management and produce a personalized patient profile. In addition to patient care, the combination of the data and its analysis can be used to teach health professionals at all levels.
Potential Applications:
This device will help address the difficult and important diagnostic question of the cause of a patient’s dyspnea or shortness of breath. Combining lung function data from PFTs with other important physiological data such as heart function from heart ultrasound (ECHO) in real-time and analyzing it with artificial intelligence will be a tremendous advancement in identifying the cause of dyspnea. This invention could be incorporated into almost every healthcare delivery site that cares for patients with obstructive lung disease that present with dyspnea as a chief complaint. This would include thousands of emergency departments, outpatient clinics, hospitals, acute care facilities, and facilities using tele-medicine consultation. In addition, as a teaching tool this invention could be used in training almost all healthcare providers including physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, emergency medical technicians, and others.
Advantages and Benefits:
There is presently nothing available that combines pulmonary function test data with other relevant clinical data to address the common serious symptom of dyspnea. Assessing PFT results and other clinical data either by the healthcare provider alone or with the aid of artificial intelligence and deep learning will give a licensee of the invention a distinct advantage for their product whether that be an ultrasound machine, an electronic stethoscope, or a multi-modality device. This would also provide a distinct advantage for those producers of AI and Deep Learning Software. The same would be true for companies in medical education using advanced technology as they would be able to provide their learners a unique learning experience to enhance their clinical knowledge and their clinical reasoning and diagnostic skills based on feedback of common clinical scenarios.