Research Progress and Prospects of Internet of Things Technology in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Management

In recent years, the Internet of Things technology (IoT) has been developed extremely rapidly, and has been widely applied in the medicine field. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is one of the most common chronic respiratory diseases in China, and it is worth exploring how IoT can be used to improve the clinical practice of COPD management. We summarized the research progress of IoT technology in COPD management at home and abroad and found that the current research on the application of IoT in COPD management is still in the exploratory stage and lacks high-quality, large-sample studies by reviewing the literature. Real-world studies are needed to conduct systematic evaluation of designed mature models or products in the future, especially the impacts on long-term clinical outcomes of patients, quality of life and health economics evaluation. Products design should be tailored to the characteristics and target of COPD and the characteristics of users, and emphasis should also be placed on qualitative researches to understand the experiences, opinions or attitudes of users toward such products.