Exploring how technology can unleash the benefits of belly breathing
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Exploring how technology can unleash the benefits of belly breathing for children and young people with long-term conditions.
IRAS ID
297926
Contact name
Manjul Rathee
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
BFB Labs
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 11 months, 31 days
Research summary
Emotional self-regulation can help young people self-manage long-term health conditions like asthma.
Diaphragmatic breathing (otherwise known as deep or belly breathing) is a particularly useful self-regulation technique. It's proven to improve young people's capacity to deal with stress, anxiety and pain.
But there's a problem: it's not easy to teach diaphragmatic breathing to young people. It's an abstract concept, and young people often struggle to engage with it.
We're developing a new digital intervention - working title "ChronReg" - to solve this problem.
ChronReg will build on BFB Labs' existing proprietary technology, developed for our gaming intervention, Champions of the Shengha (for more details, see https://www.bfb-labs.com/cots). It will use real-time feedback on young people's cognitive and emotional state to teach them diaphragmatic breathing.
In this feasibility study, we'll work with clinicians, young people with long-term conditions and their parents or guardians. We want to understand the challenges they face and how ChronReg can address them.
Our objectives are to:
1. Understand clinician needs - how does our intervention fit with existing care pathways? How do current solutions need to be improved?
2. Understand patient needs - how can our intervention improve on current solutions?
3. Establish partnerships (e.g. with experts and relevant organisations) that will help further develop our interventionREC name
East Midlands - Nottingham 1 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
21/EM/0121
Date of REC Opinion
1 Jun 2021
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion