SANDPIPER: LOW-COST, SMARTPHONE BASED SPIROMETER

Crowd Funded Alternative to a Spirometer Will Go On Sale Soon

Sandpiper is a great new smartphone based medical device. The low-cost unit which works equally well with android and iOS is an alternative to the standard spirometer. The Sandpiper is both easy to operate and more economical to use than conventional lung airflow apparatuses. It is a combination of a smartphone app and a measuring unit that plugs directly into the headphone jack on the phone. A sensor inside the plug-in-unit registers the user’s passing air velocity as an electrical equivalent and calculates the total volume of air.

The Sandpipers developers hope to start selling the product in December 2014 at an estimated retail price of $55, far cheaper than the several thousand dollars it costs to buy a standard spirometer!