RESPIRATORY MEASUREMENT AND MONITORING SYSTEM

TECHNICAL FIELD

The invention relates to a respiratory measurement and monitoring system for measuring the respiration of patients suffering respiratory disorders and for monitoring respiratory training.

Specifically, the invention concerns a respiratory measurement and monitoring system for measurement of the respiration of patients suffering from respiratory disorders like COPD, bronchial asthma and post-operative respiratory exercise, and for monitoring whether the patients are performing respiratory exercise or not.

PRIOR ART

Current devices can be classised under two main categories: traditional mechanical respiratory breath control devices, or devices that perform a respiratory study without any kind of monitoring, and electronic respiratory breath control devices. Mechanical devices are large in dimensions and difficult to use. At the same time, the patient who performs respiratory exercise cannot keep any record of the exercises the patient performs, and it is not possible to track whether the patient performs the respiratory exercise or not. These devices are also difficult to clean. Electronic respiratory measurement devices, on the other hand, measure with either ultrasonic or pressure sensor. The electronic respiratory measurement device usually measures the first 3 seconds of the inhalation process. It has no function to instruct the patient to do respiratory exercise. These devices also do not provide feedback on whether the respiratory exercise is done correctly.

Literature searches revealed a Turkish patent application with the application number "2018/1 1456" and the invention title "A Lung Function Measurement System Based Upon Single Breath and Repeated Breathing Methods". The application in question relates to a lung function measurement system based on both single respiratory and repeated respiratory methods. However, in the said application, there is no evidence that the device can perform respiratory exercises, monitoring the exercise, recognising whether the exercise has been performed correctly or not, and sending feedback to the person concerned.

As a result of the research in the literature, a Turkish patent application with the application number "2017/23520" and the invention title "Easy-to-Use Breath Quality Meter" was found. The application relates to the measurement of breath quality by means of breath, lung diameter and diaphragm level. The invention also monitors and records the pulse via the jugular vein with pulse sensors. However, in the said application, there is no evidence that the device is capable of performing respiratory exercises, recording the exercise, recognising whether the exercise has been performed correctly or not, and sending feedback to the person concerned.

As a result, the problems mentioned above, which could not be solved in the light of the existing technique, necessitated an innovation in the relevant technical field.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

The invention relates to a respiratory measurement and monitoring system for eliminating the above-mentioned disadvantages and bringing new advantages to the related technical field.

The main object of the invention is to enable the patient to perform respiratory exercises and to monitor and record the respiratory exercises performed.

Another purpose of the invention is to check whether the respiratory exercises are performed correctly and to send feedback to the related person.

Another purpose of the invention is to enable the patient's respiratory to be measured and the measurements to be recorded on a single device.

In order to fulfil all the aforementioned and the following detailed description, the present invention is a respiratory measurement and monitoring system that measures the respiratory characteristics of patients who have respiratory disorders of as COPD, asthma or who need to perform respiratory exercises after surgery and monitors whether the relevant patients perform respiratory exercises or not, and characterized by comprising;

• body front part and body back part forming the body of the respiratory measurement and monitoring device,

• on the respiratory measurement and monitoring device; an electronic card that detects the speed of the sounds emitted from the patient's breath by means of the software running in, makes sense of the detected patient sounds using speech processing methods and classifies the sounds, a mouthpiece into which the patient blows his respiratory by placing his/her mouth against, microphone on the electronic card, which converts the sound generated by the breath moving in the mouthpiece into an electrical signal

• a cloud system that the physician connects to in order to monitor the exercises performed by the patient,

• wireless communication module that enables connection to the mentioned cloud system via,

• the cloud system database, which receives and records the classified sound analysis results via wireless communication module via the electronic card in the cloud system,

• an exercise application that runs in the cloud system, compares the sound analysis values obtained from the patient with the exercise values requested by the physician, analyses the compared values and determines how much of the value determined by the physician has been achieved as a result of the analysis, the server that enables connection to the mentioned cloud system via the mobile application in the mobile device.

In order to best understand the structure of the present invention and its advantages with additional elements, it should be evaluated together with the figures described below.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

Figure 1 is an exploded view of the respiratory measurement and monitoring device of the invention.

Figure 2 is a rear view of the respiratory measurement and monitoring device of the invention.

Figure 3 is a representative illustration of the air inlet and outlet direction of the mouthpiece.

Figure 4 is a representative illustration of the respiratory measurement and monitoring system of the invention.

The drawings are not necessarily to scale, and the details not necessary for understanding the present invention may be omitted. Furthermore, elements which are at least substantially identical or have at least substantially identical functions are indicated by the same number.

REFERENCE NUMBERS

100. Respiratory measurement and monitoring device

1 . Body front part

2. Electronic card

3. Body rear part

4. Mouthpiece

5. Microphone

6. Temperature sensor

7. Card fixing element

8. Body closing element

9. USB port 10. Server

11 . Cloud system

11 a. Cloud system database

11 b. Exercise application

12. Mobile device

12a. Mobile application

13. Communication module

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

In this detailed description, the inventive respiratory measurement and monitoring system is described only by way of non-limiting examples for a better understanding of the subject matter.

The invention comprises body front part (1 ), electronic card (2), body rear part (3), mouthpiece (4), microphone (5), temperature sensor (6), card fixing element (7), body closing element (8), USB port (9), server (10), cloud system (1 1 ), cloud system database (1 1 a) and exercise application (11 b). The body front part (1 ) is the body part located at the front of the respiratory measurement and monitoring device (100). The electronic card (2) is a circuit that detects the speed of the sounds emitted from the patient by means of the software in it, classifies the relevant sounds and sends the classified sounds to the cloud system (1 1 ) via the wireless communication module (13) on it. The electronic card (2) makes sense of the sounds using sound processing methods. The body rear part (3) is the body part located at the rear of the respiratory measurement and monitoring device (100). Mouthpiece (4) is an apparatus that the patient breathes into by placing his/her mouth against it, the shape of which is made according to the resistance to be given to the vocal tract. If it is desired to change the resistance, a different mouthpiece (4) will be used. The microphone (5) is the component on the electronic card (2) that converts the sound generated by the breath moving through the mouthpiece (4) into an electrical signal. The temperature sensor (6) is located on the electronic card (2) and measures the temperature of the breath moving through the mouthpiece (4). Breath temperature provides information about the health status of the person. With the developed software, breath rate, breath volume and temperature will be evaluated together. The card fixing element (7) is the element that fixes the electronic card (2) to the body. The card fixing element (7) is preferably a nut. The body closing element (8) is the element that enables the body front part (1 ) and the body rear part (3) to interlock and form a whole. The body closing element (8) is preferably a pin. The USB port (9) is used to power the respiratory measurement and monitoring device (100) and to charge the battery inside the device. The respiratory measuring and monitoring device (100) is preferably battery operated. The USB port (9) is preferably a type C port. The server (10) is the computer unit that enables connection to the cloud system (1 1 ). The cloud system (1 1 ) is a unit in which the sound analysis results in the electronic card (2) are transferred to the cloud system database (1 1 a) by means of the wireless communication module (13) (preferably wi-fi module) on the electronic card (2) and recorded in the cloud system database (1 1 a), and through the exercise application (1 1 b), it is determined how much of the physician's requests are fulfilled by comparing the analysis results obtained with the exercise values requested by the physician.

The respiratory measurement and monitoring device (100) is primarily an electronic device and performs sound measurement by analysing the sounds emitted during the progression of the sound coming out of the mouth in the mouthpiece (4) having a certain resistance. The respiratory measurement and monitoring device (100) uses speech processing methods, which is a sub-branch of digital signal processing.

Sound recognition is a field that has been researched for many years. What is done here is to transcribe the spoken language into text and thus develop technologies. Sound recognition algorithms are based on two different methods. These are ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) and STT (Speech To Text).

ASR means automatic sound recognition. It means the processing of the received sounds by using hardware-based techniques and software. STT is a sound to text transcription system. It enables the transcription of sounds into text by the device. Sound recognition technologies fed by algorithms work mathematically with HMM (Hidden Markov Model) and DTW (Dynamic Time Warping) models and form the basis of technologies that help the user.

As shown in Figure 1 , the respiratory measurement and monitoring device (100) generally consists of two main parts, namely the mouthpiece (4) and the body. The body part consists of the body front part (1 ), electronic circuit card (2), body rear cover (3). In the respiratory measurement and monitoring device (100), the sound emitted during the progression of the breath coming out of the mouth in the mouthpiece (4) is received by the microphone (5) on the electronic card (2). After recording the sound for a certain period of time, the electronic card (2) detects the speed of the sound coming out of the mouth by analysing it with the developed deep learning software. The deep learning software embedded in the electronic card (2) classifies the sounds in certain classes. Then, the sound analysis results are transferred to the cloud system (1 1 ) via the wireless communication module (13) on the electronic card (2). Through the software developed in the cloud system (1 1 ), the analysis values obtained and the exercise values requested by the physician can be compared to determine how much of the physician's requests are fulfilled. For example, if the physician asks the patient to blow at a speed of 4 ms/s for 5 s, the said respiratory measurement and monitoring device (100) can determine whether the patient has performed this test and at what speed for how long. It is possible to connect to the exercise application (1 1 b) from the cloud system (1 1 ) by using the wireless communication module (13) on the electronic card (2) on the respiratory measurement and monitoring device (100), and it is also possible to enter the exercise application (1 1 b) by connecting with a mobile application (12a) developed on the mobile device (12) via the bluetooth module on the said card via the server (10). In this way, the physician can monitor how much the patient follows the programme and how accurate the exercises are. The exercises performed by the patient are recorded in the cloud system (1 1 ). In this way, the disease status can be monitored weekly, monthly or annually.