Adherence to a garment-adhered respiratory force monitor in patients with advanced COPD

Anticipating adverse events among chronic respiratory disease patients may benefit from remote respiratory monitoring. However, capturing granular respiratory features continuously previously required body-worn sensors devices not suitable for long-term wear. Long monitoring periods are required given to the chronic nature of chronic respiratory diseases. This study evaluates adherence to the health tag physiological sensing form factor. This is a class of devices adhered to the inside of a patient's undergarment as an affordance for adherence, but which also provides on-body contact to produce robust respiratory data. 94 individuals with moderate to severe COPD were enrolled in a 9-month remote monitoring study. The mean enrollment period was 5.3 months (SD=3.5 months). The device yielded an overall daily adherence rate of 87% (SD=20%). The presence of two groups of participants emerged, novelty and sustained, providing additional support for a 90-day novelty period for wearable devices, found in prior research. The group that sustained enrollment past the novelty period was characterized by an increased proportion of device wear time. The study indicates that long-term, remote respiratory monitoring of advanced COPD patients is feasible and can produce respiratory features beyond rate alone. Such datasets could be used to train models that potentially identify respiratory deterioration preceding adverse events.