White Paper: Smart cough monitoring - an innovation milestone for global respiratory health

Each year, respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis, COPD, lung cancer, asthma, and now COVID-19 takemillions of lives and disrupt or disable hundreds of millions more. The global burden of these diseases is expectedto increase as developing nations industrialize, and the need to track and respond to that spread grows evermoreurgent. These diseases share a common syndrome, coughing, the characteristics of which allow physicians todiagnose and monitor the course of respiratory illnesses. The medical value of cough tracking has long beenrecognized as a critically important tool in patient care and public health, but until recently technology has laggedbehind the need for effective cough monitoring solutions. Now, with the parallel rise of smartphone use andmachine learning analytics, half the world’s population is already carrying the device that can fundamentallychange our approach to the global crisis in respiratory health. Smartphones offer the ideal platform for a scalable,effective, and smart cough monitoring tool.