Breathe Better – BREATHE Hackathon 2015


Date Sep 2015
Link imperial.ac.uk

In the 36 hours of the Breathe Hackathon, we were challenged to come up with a solution to one of the many problems faced by COPD (Chronic Obstructive Respiratory Disease) sufferers.

After looking at patient profiles from the British Lung Foundation, we decided to target the at risk demographic of developing COPD, 50-60 year old smokers from a working class background who may live in a city.

We wanted to create an ultra low-cost, low tech product that would hope to raise awareness of COPD itself, driven by the fact that an estimated 2 million people from the UK go undiagnosed every year, causing significant cost to the NHS1.

Our final product, ’Breathe Better’, was a breathing awareness campaign which included a mail-home breathing awareness kit, targeted at known smokers. It consisted of the Puff-O-Meter and a quick questionnaire to send to your GP.

Prototyping the Puff-O-Meter

Prototyping the Puff-O-Meter

Demo

Campaign

Hackathon presentation

DDL conference

Presenting the Breathe Better Campaign on the podium at DDL 2015 in Edinburgh

Hackathon finalist

The Breathe Better campaign won 3rd place out of 11 teams as judged by an expert panel.

Presented at industry conference

We presented the Breathe Better awareness campaign at the 2015 Drug Delivery to the Lungs (DDL) conference in Edinburgh.

Team members:

  • Edward Brial
  • Raunaq Bose
  • Amanda Steinbeck
  • Paul Sumners
  • Charles Cai
  • Umar Hossain


  1. Clearing the air: A national study of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Commission for Healthcare Audit and Inspection, 2006. ↩︎