Breathing new life into oxygen therapy

Imagine watching your loved one finally return home with their oxygen therapy, hoping for peaceful days together. Yet every faint change in the concentrator's hum, every slight tug on the tubing, or every quiet pause leaves you quietly terrified: an unnoticed disconnection, empty tank, or wrong flow rate could silently deprive them of oxygen—or deliver too much—triggering a sudden worsening of breathlessness that sends them back to the hospital.

But what if that constant worry could be eased through reliable, around-the-clock oversight? Respiratory therapist Valerie Obenchain was tired of watching her COPD patients return to the hospital with complications that could have been avoided with better supplemental oxygen monitoring at home. It was when her own grandmother began having issues that she decided to do something and founded Advanced Interactive Response Systems (AIRS).

“It’s frustrating we weren’t doing more to monitor supplemental oxygen users,” Valerie said. “Oxygen is such a basic need, but no one is helping to ensure the proper delivery.”

AIRS’ oxygen flow monitor (OFM) is the first device to continuously track both the oxygen supply and patient, securely streaming data to a HIPAA-compliant cloud portal, enabling remote monitoring by respiratory therapists and caregivers. AIRS is bringing telemedicine to supplemental oxygen therapy.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the third leading cause of death worldwide, and oxygen therapy is central to managing it. Current systems are prone to hidden failures like:

• Disconnections, leaks and kinks
• Depleted tanks and improper oxygen titration

Patients may receive too little or too much oxygen, both of which carry serious risks. Clinicians, meanwhile, often lack real-time insights, relying on intermittent spot checks that can miss critical changes.

We are proud to support AIRS, which was selected for the 2024 Conquer Detroit Accelerator, a partnership between the MSU Research Foundation and Henry Ford. From this program, and with assistance from Henry Ford Innovations, AIRS partnered with Dr. Avi Cohen to design a clinical feasibility study now underway at Henry Ford’s Pulmonary Rehabilitation Center.

Using the knowledge gained from the study, AIRS hopes to have FDA approval to begin production of the device in 2026. Target markets include hospitals, nursing homes, home health, and oxygen suppliers where the idea is to provide safer care and a better quality of life for patients living with COPD and other pulmonary diseases that require supplemental oxygen therapy.