“Are you breathing?” – Design, build and testing of a low-cost, portable respiratory rate monitor

Abstract A patient’s respiratory rate is one of the critical vital signs that a determinant patient well-being. However, it all too often neglected or misreported by health care professionals. This study presents design, build and testing low-cost, portable monitor to facilitate accurate reporting rate. The comprised thermistor-based transducer capture breath cycle patients based on temperature differential created across thermistor. signal was conditioned processed such could be analysed identify peaks ultimately determine For total cost at time development less than C40, integrated system demonstrated modest average error 5.6% range different ambient temperatures, depth breathing, orifice breathing. comparable with other commercial custom devices. presented may interest for use in an emergency room clinical setting, especially severely resource-constrained countries.