Digital technologies and pulmonary medicine

Advances in technology, data science and medicine have ushered a new era of precision medicine with the hopes of streamlining investigations of novel therapies as well as innovative ways to deliver available therapies to the patients most likely to benefit and in a way that increases compliance. Chronic pulmonary diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, interstitial lung diseases (ILD), cystic fibrosis (CF) are challenging due to lack of disease modifying therapies, heterogeneity among patients, and problems with patient compliance to available therapy. This chapter uses these chronic pulmonary conditions as examples to illustrate how current and future digital technologies could be leveraged to improve patient stratification for investigating novel therapies and to improve adherence to therapy. Finally, we review the challenges and opportunities of novel digital technologies in the context of chronic pulmonary diseases.