Cough Monitoring in COPD

COPD is associated with disabling, progressive symptoms with episodes of rapid worsening termed acute exacerbations (AECOPD). It poses a significant global health challenge with AECOPD often resulting in the use of unscheduled care services including hospital attendance and admission. In addition to trying to prevent AECOPD, strategies have been developed to identify clinical deterioration early prompting intervention in the community with the aim of preventing unscheduled care service utilization. Telemonitoring refers to the use of technology to monitor patients' clinical condition in their own homes. One of the proposed benefits of telemonitoring is the early detection of clinical deterioration. At present, COPD telemonitoring relies on daily symptom reporting and monitoring of basic physiological data including heart rate and pulse oximetry. However, current strategies lack specificity resulting in difficulty identifying true exacerbations from normal day to day variation. Cough and sputum production are reported by 60-80% of COPD patients, are increased at the time of exacerbation, and are associated with accelerated lung function decline, frequent exacerbations, and earlier mortality. It has previously been demonstrated that change in cough frequency at the time of exacerbation can be detected using a cough monitor that utilizes cough classifier software to analyse ambient sound. In the context of telemonitoring, this has the potential to facilitate the early detection of clinical change using an objective measure that does not require patient effort. Remote monitoring of COPD patients in their own homes aims to detect clinical deterioration early prompting intervention in the community with the aim of preventing utilization of unscheduled care services. Current systems do not succeed in reaching this target . A pilot study of remote cough monitoring has demonstrated that cough frequency was significantly increased during COPD exacerbation and trends in cough frequency can be detected using remote microphones and automated cough counting software. In a follow-up study, a cough-based alert system has been constructed showing promising performance. This prospective evaluation will validate the constructed system in a further COPD patient cohort.