# Regional / National platform for resp/sleep tests **URL:** \ **Category:** Open Forum\ **Tags:** respiratory, sleep, medical-technology\ **Created:** [January 18, 2024, 9:54pm UTC](https://ehealthforum.nz/t/regional-national-platform-for-resp-sleep-tests/30657 "2024-01-18T21:54:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 10
**Author:** ![bendun](https://ehealthforum.nz/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/4da419/32.png) [@bendun](https://ehealthforum.nz/u/bendun)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2024, 3:47am UTC](https://ehealthforum.nz/t/regional-national-platform-for-resp-sleep-tests/30657/10 "2024-01-28T03:47:33Z")
Thanks for the responses and sorry for the slow reply - I have been in Australia on holiday. For clarification, there are a few levels at which the information needs to be visible. For normal people there’s the need to see the report (usually as a pdf) e.g. in HealthOne as a GP or as a hospital doctor, to check the results. Generally this would involve 1-4 pages of text and diagrams depending on complexity of the test. For us more abnormal ones, we need the data in a reviewable format - for instance, in order to create an accurate report on spirometry we need to be able to review the tests as they were done - e.g. flow volume loops for breathing tests or heart rate/saturation data for a low complexity sleep test. Once the data has been assessed for technical acceptability, a report is generated - a process that usually requires assembling stock phrases in order to allow some uniformity of reporting. So a typical report written in the current (really quite difficult to use Breeze) software and uploaded to HCS as a .pdf might run along the lines of… _The tests are technically satisfactory. The BMI is normal. Spirometry shows moderate airflow obstruction (z score between −1.64 and −2.55). Reversibility was not demonstrated. The DLCO is severely reduced (z score greater than -2.5). This is consistent with COPD. Smoking cessation is strongly recommended. Report by Ben Brockway, Respiratory Physician on Sunday 28 Jan 2024)._ As you can see this is totally something that AI could do (and frankly I would be delighted not to do given that we do thousands of such tests a year and currently no-one has reporting them in their job plan - but that’s a different matter altogether!). Sleep reporting is a little more wooly and less protocolised, but perhaps not much. While I can make clinical decisions based on a summary of the results (and often have to), the quality of the reports is better if you can review the data generated overnight - this can be reviewed in different ‘epochs’ e.g. for some things a 10hr/page allows the overall structure of the night’s sleep while 10 minutes per page allows assessment of the fidelity of the recording and whether the desaturations are because someone has stopped breathing, or just because the oximetry trace has a lot of interference. Again, the reports are more readily generated by assembling blocks of comments as it’s way faster than me typing. Rezibase and Respiro both offer the ability to drill into the data to allow review; the file sizes vary from small for spirometry to about 50Mb for a full in-hospital polysomnogram (we only do about 50/yr of those vs 500 home-based studies). Thanks to all who have mentioned proprietary devices for home assessment. It’s a fascinating area and moves quite quickly. In our experience when we compare an in-hospital PSG (the gold standard) against wearable devices there’s an OK correlation but not great, and almost all the commercial products have ‘black box’ algorithms that can change with software updates and don’t play nicely with AASM definitions of what is, for instance, obstructive sleep apnoea. Thanks again for the interest and sorry for the delay! b --- _[View the full topic](https://ehealthforum.nz/t/regional-national-platform-for-resp-sleep-tests/30657)._