Completed Lungs & Breathing Digestion, Kidneys & Other Organs

An innovative device and app using smartphone technology and improved componentry to provide real-time, at-home asthma management and save lives

Funder InnovateUK (part of UKRI)
Recipient organisation Bedfont Scientific Limited
Funding £282K
Period Mar 2025 — Dec 2025

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

A low-cost smartphone-connected breath test aims to let people with asthma monitor their airway inflammation at home in real time. Poorly controlled asthma causes tens of thousands of preventable deaths worldwide each year and places a heavy burden on healthcare systems, hospitals, and schools. Many people—especially those in lower-income groups, ethnic minorities, and urban areas with high air pollution—struggle to access consistent care. Current monitoring often relies on clinic visits, which can be infrequent and impractical. The device, called NObreatHome, uses Fractional Exhaled Nitric Oxide (FeNO) testing to detect inflammation in the lungs. By linking to a smartphone app, it gives patients and clinicians immediate feedback without expensive components. If successful, this approach could reduce hospital admissions and save the NHS significant costs, while making effective asthma management available to people who currently lack it. The project is led by a UK-based medical device company with decades of experience in breath analysis.

View original technical description
Bedfont is a UK-based medical device SME established in 1976\. The project is led by an extensive, multidiscipline team with a combined experience in breath analysis of over 50 years. Poor asthma management contributes to 250K preventable deaths globally each year -- around 60% of asthma deaths. It also leads to $100B in healthcare and economic costs, 136M hospital bed days and 23M missed school days, burdening healthcare systems and industries. In the UK, approximately 5.4M people have asthma, with only 30% of adults and 53% of children achieving well-controlled conditions. To this end, Bedfont is developing NObreatHome, a low-cost, easy-to-use Fractional Exhaled Nitric Oxide (FeNO) device and app for real-time, at-home asthma monitoring. By innovatively using smartphone technology and eliminating the need for costly components, NObreatHome will make at-home FeNO testing and real-time airway inflammation monitoring available for an initial investment of under £300\. This could reduce hospital admissions by 30%, potentially saving £69M in the UK. Furthermore, this solution will particularly benefit lower socioeconomic groups, ethnic minorities and those who live in urban areas, where air pollution is higher and access to healthcare and consistent asthma management is often limited.

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Related Research

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FeNO asthma diagnostic
AI driven inhalation technique and adherence support device with data aggregation platform for remote monitoring of asthma
Innovative Home Asthma Monitoring Solution
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EasyFlow: New asthma monitor to enable the effective control of asthma

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