Redesigning the Incentive Spirometer; The Racial History of the Incentive Spirometer and its Impact on COVID19

The incentive spirometer (IS) is a plastic respiratory recovery device that helps prevent postoperative and respiratory complications. An IS can be prescribed to patients in the hospital and/or patients can be prescribed an IS to use at home. Using an IS helps keep your lungs inflated, healthy, and free of fluid. The goal of incentive spirometry is to inhale slowly for a while, which allows your lungs to fully inflate and prevent fluid buildup that can lead to pneumonia and atelectasis, for example. During the COVID 19 pandemic, COVID patients have been prescribed ISs to strengthen and maintain their lung health. However, despite the importance of using an IS in postoperative recovery and pulmonary illnesses, patient adherence is poor. Patients prescribed an IS are typically not monitored in hospitals or at home. Patient adherence may also be low because of the boring design of the standard IS. The goal of the Capstone project is to add a gamified component to existing IS designs to motivate patients to engage using IS. The chosen game is a Ferris wheel ball scooper game that uses the force from inhalation to rotate a Ferris wheel to scoop up small plastic balls into a collection bucket. After producing prototypes, we will ask volunteer patients among Family Medicine Inpatient Service at UVA Medical Center to compare our device to the standard hospital-given IS. They will be asked to fill out a detailed survey which will then be analyzed. We hypothesize that if we add a gamified component to the existing IS design, patient compliance and engagement will increase. We will evaluate several aspects of usage: how easy to use our device? How engaging is our device? And comparison of effectiveness of the two devices (ours and conventional) in terms of clinical deterioration during their hospital stay.