Breathing exercises in intensive care

A disease, an accident or major surgery, can all make someone end up in intensive care. Being put on a ventilator for a long time, or having been through certain operations, can diminish the strength in the muscles you use when breathing. To be able to breath independently again and get your strength back, breathing exercises are vital. There is only one problem: those exercises are often extremely boring to do. With the Flow, SilverFit wants to ensure that people enjoy exercising and motivate them to recover as soon as possible.

Motivating breathing exercises

The SilverFit Flow is a portable device that is connected to a screen. On that screen, you can play games which you control through breathing. One of our games invites you to collect diamonds by breathing in. Another one requires you to breath out to throw a spear. While playing, you can see on the screen how well you perform, and that motivates you to do better each time. People are absorbed by the game and forget that they are exercising. The goal is to make them recover as soon as possible. 

Tested in intensive care

We are still developing the Flow, but the latest version is currently being tested in the intensive care unit of the Gelre Hospital. That allows us to observe how the games motivate people to exercise breathing more often and to perform better. The Flow will be further adjusted in line with the results of this study, so that it can work optimally and is perfectly adapted to the practice in intensive care units. 

A more comfortable breathing for patients with COPD

At the moment, the Flow’s games are suitable only for muscle strength training. There is a breathing-in game that helps increase the inspiratory reserve volume, and a breathing-out game that helps increase the maximum expiratory flow. The Wever, a care center in Tilburg, is also using the SilverFit Flow and testing it on people with COPD. 

To help those patients better, we are currently designing other games involving different breathing exercises. Among those new games, one will make users breath out as completely as possible, and another one will train their breathing rhythm. This will allow the system to be used more widely and it will ensure a more comfortable breathing for people with breathing problems. 

The SilverFit Flow in your department?

Would you like to know more about the SilverFit systems that are suitable for hospitals? We would be happy to meet you at your location and offer you a free demonstration of these systems. 

This project has received funding from the Eurostars-2 joint programme with co-funding from the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.