Project Fizzyo

“Imagine spending hours of your day, every day, battling with your teenage kids to do their physiotherapy. While others play video games, you are telling yours ‘no you can’t go game with your friends – you have to come and do your physio’. For 15 years,” asked mum Vicky Coxhead.

Cystic Fibrosis is a chronic, life-limiting condition affecting sufferers from birth. Approximately 1 in 2500 babies are born with CF.

With improved prevention and treatment life expectancy for patients has slowly increased and currently stands at an average of 41 years of age.

Project Fizzyo is about trying to improve physiotherapy care for children with Cystic Fibrosis. Airway clearance techniques (ACTs), physical activity and exercise can mitigate the progression of Cystic Fibrosis (CF) lung disease, but routine physiotherapy treatments are burdensome and adherence is low. Traditional research methods (RCTs) have failed to produce credible evidence to guide practice, partly because ‘blinding’ isn’t possible and patient preference can confound results.

We have worked with engineers and designers and UCL computer science students through the Industry Exchange Network (IXN) to develop electronically chipped ACT devices and wearable activity trackers to facilitate automatic data transmission from the homes of children with CF to the clinicians and researchers caring for them. Industry partners (Microsoft) and UCL computer science experts and students have also helped us develop computer games driven by breathing through an ACT device (to enhance treatment enjoyment and adherence).