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Device and game helps children, adults with asthma - Aluna

Aluna, a small business supported by the National Science Foundation, is developing a device and app to help people monitor chronic lung conditions like asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cystic fibrosis, and pulmonary fibrosis when away from the hospital.

Patients test their lung capacity by blowing into Aluna's device and playing a game on Aluna’s app. The results tell the user whether they're fine, need to take medication, or go to the emergency room.

"We're translating something that's found in the hospital to the home setting, and it typically requires a trained respiratory therapist to coach you on how to blow into the device and then it requires a pulmonologist to interpret the results," said Charvi Shetty, co-founder and CEO of Aluna. "We're leveraging gamification to be able to coach people on how to do the procedure, and then we're implementing machine learning through the help of the National Science Foundation money, to be able to interpret the results as if a pulmonologist were interpreting it."

More than 40 million people in the United States suffer from asthma, of which over 10 million are under the age of 18. Aluna’s device could positively impact children with asthma by helping them receive treatment prior to an attack.

Knox Medical Devices (doing business as Aluna) is supported by America's Seed Fund powered by the National Science Foundation a nearly $200 million program that awards research and development grants to small businesses and startups, transforming scientific discovery into products and services with commercial and societal impact. To learn more visit: https://www.aluna.io.

Credit: NSF