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Show HN: I'm a doctor and made a responsive breathing app for stress and anxiety

lungy.app

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Re: Show HN: I'm a doctor and made a responsive breathing app for stress and anxiety

#11

Post by lukko »

g105b wrote: post #4

This looks really nice. I'd love to know more about the business model. Is it completely self-funded? Does it make any revenue? Are you using it as a mechanism to help your practice? Thanks!

Thank you! So for now it's freemium, as a wellness app - so monthly, yearly or lifetime subscription to unlock all visuals, features and exercises. It may be at some point it can be provided via NHS trusts / health insurance companies.

For the first year or so it was self-developed and self-funded, and then in 2021 I won a couple of grants to develop the prototype for release. I don't suggest it directly to patients as there would be a conflict of interest, but I'm hoping it could be useful in both respiratory disease and stress/anxiety.

Re: Show HN: I'm a doctor and made a responsive breathing app for stress and anxiety

#12

Post by killjoywashere »

My brother made something similar as an art project: it's a circuit board with 2 LED digits. The numbers increase quickly on the inhale and slowly on the exhale so that it's in sync with 10 breaths per minute. It lures you into following it's cadence with your own breathing and you eventually get lightheaded because you're fucking with your blood gases.

Re: Show HN: I'm a doctor and made a responsive breathing app for stress and anxiety

#14

Post by lukko »

killjoywashere wrote: post #12

My brother made something similar as an art project: it's a circuit board with 2 LED digits. The numbers increase quickly on the inhale and slowly on the exhale so that it's in sync with 10 breaths per minute. It lures you into following it's cadence with your own breathing and you eventually get lightheaded because you're fucking with your blood gases.

Yep - that is one of the reasons I wanted to use the mic input, so if someone was hyperventilating it would be possible to tell them to slow down and breathe less deeply.

Re: Show HN: I'm a doctor and made a responsive breathing app for stress and anxiety

#16

Post by jmole »

This is cool - have you ever thought about integrating it with some kind of band or sensor that tracks breathing rate?

Lung diseases aside, I think many people would be interested in an app that lets them know when their breathing becomes shallow or non-tidal, and helps them refocus and get back to baseline.

Re: Show HN: I'm a doctor and made a responsive breathing app for stress and anxiety

#17

Post by lukko »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #10

Very nicely designed. Is there a paper showing the accuracy of measuring breath volume and frequency using a phone microphone as compared to other known methods (i.e, medical sensors, but also more consumer-focused devices such as chest straps)? The frequency seems like an easy problem to solve, volume much less so.

Hmm, I'll have a look - that would be a really good figure. You can estimate the air velocity with the mic (then derive the flow rate and volume), but I'm not sure how closely it matches spirometry (lung function tests)

Re: Show HN: I'm a doctor and made a responsive breathing app for stress and anxiety

#20

Post by lukko »

Waterluvian wrote: post #15

At first glance this looks brilliant! A small portion of the app reminds me of this demo: https://paveldogreat.github.io/WebGL-Fluid-Simulation/ (click/tap/drag)

Yep, definitely! The app has a euler fluid sim implementation based off: https://developer.nvidia.com/gpugems/gpugems/part-vi-beyond-...
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