87049Development of a novel application based platform for pulmonary rehabilitation (COPD)ClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKChronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD) is a chronic lung condition affecting more than 250 million people in the world. By 2030 it will be the third most common cause of death. Patients are treated in different ways, including being given oxygen and other drugs, but symptoms often get worse and patients are frequently readmitted to hospital. This makes COPD expensive to treat, costing the NHS over £2 billion per year. Pulmonary rehabilitation is a treatment where patients are given exercises and taught how to take better care of their condition. This rehabilitation reduces the chances that a patient will be readmitted to hospital, saving the NHS money. If pulmonary rehabilitation was given to all COPD patients then the NHS could save £69 million per year, but it is only currently offered to 13% of patients. COVID-19 has made the situation even worse. COPD patients are extremely vulnerable to the virus and have been shielding. Many outpatient services, including some COPD rehabilitation clinics, have closed. The pandemic has highlighted that our current pulmonary rehabilitation programmes are not good enough, and need to be adapted so they can be delivered remotely, so that all COPD patients can benefit without the need to leave their home. We have a new technology that could meet this need. HandHeldHealth Ltd are an Oxford-based company that formed in 2020 in response to the pandemic. We have developed a smartphone app that can deliver pulmonary rehabilitation for COVID-19 survivors. The app will be freely available to COVID-19 patients and will play an important part in helping to improve the health of a generation of pandemic survivors. We now propose adapting the app so that it can be used to help people with COPD. This will require some changes and additional features. We will then work with patients and healthcare providers to give as many COPD patients access to the app as possible, and begin to test how well it works. Ultimately, we will continue developing our apps to help people with other respiratory diseases, including pneumonia, asthma and lung cancer. By distributing these apps to other countries, and translating them into other languages, we will increase their accessibility even further and make the UK the world's leading supplier of pulmonary rehabilitation solutions. Another key goal for HandHeldHealth is to reduce the environmental impact of pulmonary rehabilitation. Incredibly, 5% of British road traffic is NHS-related. Home-based rehabilitation has actually been shown to be more effective than going to clinics, and by providing our technology we will reduce the travel-related carbon footprint. Social and economic factors mean that some people can't access pulmonary rehabilitation, for example if they can't afford the cost of regularly travelling to the clinic. We will work with healthcare providers to increase access for all patients (regardless of their background or economic status) to this rehabilitation technology from their home, which will therefore increase environmental sustainability, reduce costs for the NHS, and improve health for COPD patients.