Tyto Insights™️ for Wheeze Detection

TytoCare’s new capability enhances the virtual care experience for all patients, clinicians, providers, and health plans by increasing quality of care, expanding our chronic care management capabilities, and further assisting clinicians and specialists to make accurate and informed remote diagnoses.

Lung wheezes are a common symptom. Wheezing is caused by inflammation and narrowing of the airways in any location from the throat to the lungs. Wheezing is characterized by a shrill, high-pitched whistling or coarse rattling sound made while breathing and is often associated with difficulty breathing. 

Wheezing is highly prevalent, particularly in babies and children. Up to 30% of infants will experience wheezing at some point, as will 12% of adolescents. Wheezing may be more common in children and babies because of their smaller, narrower airways.

The partial airway obstruction that leads to wheezing can be caused by a number of acute and chronic conditions. Non-chronic, acute conditions associated with wheezing include bronchitis, bronchiolitis, allergies, pneumonia, RSV, respiratory tract infections, and physical obstructions. Chronic patients with wheezing usually suffer from conditions such as asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD), a long-term inflammation of the lining of the bronchial tubes. In chronic patients, wheezing is an important sign of exacerbation of their condition that warrants follow up. 

Detecting wheezing poses several challenges. Discrepancies in stethoscope quality and clinician technique may lead to subjective detection of wheezing and differences in assessment. Parental confusion about wheezing also contributes to the challenge of wheeze detection. Parents often lack sufficient understanding of wheezing and can often miss critical signs. In some chronic condition situations, parents may overuse the ED for wheezing, leading to high costs, wasted resources, and fragmented care.

The prompt and accurate detection of wheezing ensures that patients receive timely, life-saving care. Missed and delayed diagnosis of wheezing leads to poor health outcomes due to a deterioration in respiratory conditions, such as asthma exacerbation. Undiagnosed wheezing impairs patients’ quality of life, causing sleep disruptions, shortness of breath, and lost days of school or work. 

For healthcare payers, undetected wheezing ultimately increases total cost of care. It leads to increased healthcare utilization, including primary care appointments, ED and urgent care visits, and avoidable hospitalizations. Better detection and treatment of wheezing is in everyone’s ultimate best interest.  

Tyto Insights^TM for Wheeze Detection now enables remote diagnoses to support clinicians in detecting wheezing. Wheeze detection is the latest feature among TytoCare’s AI-powered decision support technology. 

Tyto Insights^TM for Wheeze Detection serves as a trusted and accessible solution for wheeze detection. It is FDA-cleared and bears the CE mark for usage by clinicians in Europe. 

Tyto Insights^TM for Wheeze Detection enhances the virtual care experience for patients, providers, and health plans. It enables the standardized and objective detection of wheezing, which allows for timely, remote diagnoses. Not only does this latest offering increase TytoCare’s quality of care and expand our chronic care management capabilities, it also further assists clinicians and specialists in making informed, accurate diagnoses remotely.  

To use Tyto Insights^TM for Wheeze Detection, patients conduct a lung exam using their Tyto device. TytoCare’s algorithms automatically evaluate the lung recordings. If wheezing is detected, the clinician will receive an indication on their Clinical Station. In conjunction with other relevant exams and patient data, the clinician decides on a diagnosis and writes a prescription for treatment if needed. US-based patients aged two and up who are part of the Asthma CCM solution will get an indication in the TytoCare app if wheezing is detected.

Tyto Insights^TM for Wheeze Detection is an accurate, easy-to-use solution that is being made available automatically to all existing TytoCare customers at no additional cost, with gradual rollouts starting in June 2023. 

Tyto Insights^TM for Wheeze Detection is based on advanced algorithms, spectral analysis, and signal processing techniques that analyze recorded lung sounds. It breaks down the sound into different frequency components and tracks how those frequencies change over time.  

To develop this latest tool, we collected large amounts of anonymous clinical exam data from TytoCare visits, such as diagnoses, usage behavior, and physical exams. This included TytoCare’s own database of lung and heart sounds, which is the largest of its kind. 

Clinical specialists worked to identify abnormalities and pathologies. Each abnormality was independently identified and verified by multiple pulmonologists. TytoCare’s algorithm teams then used this data to develop our AI-powered Tyto Insights^TM for Wheeze Detection, reinforcing and substantiating clinician diagnoses.

Tyto Insights^TM for Wheeze Detection enables clinicians to provide optimal care for both acute and chronic respiratory conditions. Many of the long-term conditions that are successfully monitored by TytoCare are respiratory in nature, making this offering especially vital for chronic care patients.

Tyto Insights^TM for Wheeze Detection bolsters TytoCare’s Home Smart Clinic^TM by providing better quality of care and empowering healthcare professionals. It enables accurate, objective diagnoses that are on par with those received by consulting with a specialist. It also reduces total cost of care by detecting the location of wheezes and finding them on time to limit the risk they pose. Tyto Insights^TM for Wheeze Detection helps address the challenge of staff shortages by offering accurate and reliable wheeze detection remotely. 

As Dedi Gilad, CEO and Co-Founder of TytoCare explained, “Our Tyto Insight capabilities, including our wheeze detection algorithm, furthers our goal of enhancing the virtual care experience for all patients, clinicians, providers, and health plans – not just by increasing the quality of care and expanding our chronic care management capabilities, but also by further assisting clinicians and specialists to make informed and accurate diagnoses remotely. At TytoCare, we have the world’s largest database of lung and heart sounds, as well as related symptoms and vital signs, and we will continue to leverage it to provide superb quality of care for families worldwide.”

To learn more about Tyto Insights^TM for Wheeze Detection, visit tytocare.com.