Performance of Contactless Respiratory Rate Monitoring by Albus HomeTM, an Automated System for Nocturnal Monitoring at Home: A Validation Study

Abstract

Respiratory rate (RR) is a clinically important predictor of cardio-respiratory deteriorations. The mainstay of clinical measurement comprises the manual counting of chest movements, which is variable between clinicians and limited to sporadic readings. Emerging solutions are limited by poor adherence and acceptability or are not clinically validated. Albus HomeTM is a contactless and automated bedside system for nocturnal respiratory monitoring that overcomes these limitations. This study aimed to validate the accuracy of Albus Home compared to gold standards in real-world sleeping environments. Participants undertook overnight monitoring simultaneously using Albus Home and gold-standard polygraphy with thoraco-abdominal respiratory effort belts (SomnomedicsEU). Reference RR readings were obtained by clinician-count of polygraphy data. For both the Albus system and reference, RRs were measured in 30-s segments, reported as breaths/minute, and compared. Accuracy was defined as the percentage of RRs from the Albus system within ±2 breaths/minute of reference counts. Across a diverse validation set of 32 participants, the mean accuracy exceeded 98% and was maintained across different participant characteristics. In a Bland–Altman analysis, Albus RRs had strong agreement with reference mean differences and the limits of agreement of −0.4 and ±1.2 breaths/minute, respectively. Albus Home is a contactless yet accurate system for automated respiratory monitoring. Validated against gold –standard methods, it enables long-term, reliable nocturnal monitoring without patient burden.