Imagine a World In Which Monitoring Cough Frequency can Predict and Prevent COPD Exacerbations

In spite of being the most common symptom across a wide range of diseases and ailments, cough has stubbornly remained impossible to track or measure in any meaningful way. Because of this, cough science has stalled: there hasn’t been a new cough medication approved by the FDA since the 1950s and millions of people who suffer from cough are struggling to even talk to their doctors about it. 

For centuries, doctors and researchers had to rely on patients’ recollection and subjective description of their cough. 

Today, a new approach is possible. With the emergence of powerful AI models and very accurate sensors we carry with us all the time, we can finally observe coughing directly and objectively and study its patterns over time.

Hyfe has not only made cough tracking possible, convenient, and widely available. We are also pioneering powerful insights derived from cough frequency patterns. Using our technology, tens of thousands of people are tracking their cough long term. And for the first time ever we can study objective cough data at scale. 

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Here, we are highlighting some of the more interesting research findings, snippets, and data-based anecdotes that are emerging from this new, never-before explored datastream that are emerging from the use of Hyfe as an investigational device. If you want to dig deeper into cough science, have a look at these scientific publications that have involved Hyfe cough detection.

The chart above* shows a theoretical scenario in which a COPD sufferer tracks their cough.* The change in cough frequency predicts a COPD exacerbation days before the event. The science of this is not controversial. It is known that cough frequency is predictive of COPD exacerbations and research has shown that cough monitoring can predict 45% of #COPD exacerbations 3.4 days in advance, with only 1 false positive every 100 days, according to research published in Lung. 

This means that simple cough monitoring could predict half of all exacerbations, improving quality of life for sufferers, reducing strain on emergency medical infrastructure and saving millions in payers’ costs.  

The challenge until now has been that routine cough monitoring at home has not been possible. Hyfe has changed that.

Hyfe’s detection models run passively on any smart device and without any additional action required. They run on-device, with full privacy protection and do not depend on any specialized infrastructure. Hyfe is not yet FDA-cleared as a medical device, but is being used in over 40 research studies worldwide.      

This also creates tremendous value for providers of remote patient monitoring platforms. Adding cough monitoring to existing platforms is trivial - Hyfe’s SDK runs out of the box on most devices, with minimum integration required - and the value created is high and immediate.

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Learn More about Hyfe's work in COPD & how investment in cough monitoring carries a return of +161%

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*This chart is for illustrative use only. The data shown is hypothetical.

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