Continuous monitoring of lung function is vital for lung transplant recipients to detect rejection episodes or infections at an early stage. Until now, spirometry data at MHH has been evaluated exclusively during in-person follow-up appointments. As a result, important changes in the course of the disease may sometimes be detected too late, and the available digital data is incomplete.

At this year’s DZL Annual Meeting, Dr. Jan Fuge and his team received a poster prize for developing a mobile health application for real-time spirometry. The project addresses several key challenges in post-transplant care: improving data availability, reducing the workload for clinical staff, and promoting patient autonomy.

The app is intended to enable patients to record spirometry data regularly at home and automatically transmit it to their treating physicians. It supports various data sources, including Bluetooth-enabled devices such as the Mir Smart One (Oxi), whose values are integrated automatically via Apple Health. Alternatively, results can be entered manually or imported from other applications (e.g., Mir Spirobank).

In addition to lung function measurements, short questionnaires will be included to capture the patient’s subjective health status. Planned visualizations—such as bar charts with individual baselines (based on GLI reference values)—will support patients in assessing their own condition. Reminders and intuitive navigation are also planned to help improve therapy adherence.

In the future, all collected data will be transmitted in real time to a research database at the clinic, automatically sorted, and displayed in a clinically usable format. This would enable healthcare professionals to evaluate changes in a patient’s condition without delay—an important step toward digitally supported, closely monitored aftercare for lung transplant recipients.

Text: BREATH/AB

Photo: private