title: Automatic prediction of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease exacerbations through home telemonitoring of symptoms.
abstract: Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a progressive disease of the lung with a great prevalence and a remarkable socio-economic impact on patients and health systems. Early detection of exacerbations could diminish the adverse effects on patients' health and cut down costs burdened on patients with COPD. A group of 16 patients were telemonitored at home using a novel electronic daily symptoms questionnaire during a 6-months field trial. Recorded data were used to train and validate a Probabilistic Neural Network (PNN) classifier in order to enable the automatic prediction of exacerbations. The proposed system was able to predict COPD exacerbations early with a margin of 4.8 ± 1.8 days (average ± SD). Detection accuracy was 80.5% (33 out of 41 exacerbations were early detected); 78.8% (26 out of 33) of theses detected events were reported exacerbation and 87.5% (7 out of 8) were unreported episodes. The proposed questionnaire and the designed automatic classifier could support the early detection of COPD exacerbations of benefit to both physicians and patients.
authors.affiliation: Biomedical Engineering and Telemedicine Research Group, University of Cádiz, Cádiz, Spain.
authors.forename: M A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Fernández-Granero
authors.affiliation: Biomedical Engineering and Telemedicine Research Group, University of Cádiz, Cádiz, Spain.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Sánchez-Morillo
authors.affiliation: Pulmonology and Allergy Unit, Puerta del Mar University Hospital, Cádiz, Spain.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: León-Jiménez
authors.affiliation: Biomedical Engineering and Telemedicine Research Group, University of Cádiz, Cádiz, Spain.
authors.forename: L F
authors.initials: LF
authors.lastname: Crespo
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003936:Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D059026:Diagnostic Self Evaluation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008499:Medical Records; D008875:Middle Aged; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods; D029424:Pulmonary Disease, Chronic Obstructive / Q000175:diagnosis*; D012008:Recurrence; D019114:Remote Consultation / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012648:Self Care / Q000379:methods*; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014584:User-Computer Interface
keywords: Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease; Probabilistic Neural Network; early detection; exacerbation; questionnaire; symptoms; telehealth; telemonitoring