Two Enloe High School students have won a national contest for developing an app that helps people who have chronic lung diseases improve their ability to breathe and have a more normal life.
The new “Respirate” app shows people who have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) how to perform various exercises that will help them improve their lung function. Lenovo announced last week that Respirate had won the online “Fan Favorite” vote in its 2018 Lenovo Scholar Network National Mobile App Development Competition.
“It was extremely mind blowing when we won,” said Udai Virk, 16, a rising junior at Enloe High in east Raleigh. “But when we sat down and thought about it afterward, we realized how spectacular our app could be.”
Virk and Jeffrey Li, 16, also a rising junior at Enloe, said they developed the app because they know people who have COPD. According to the American Lung Association, more than 11 million Americans have been diagnosed with COPD, which is the third-leading cause of death in the country.
“We thought this was a huge thing,” Li said. “Let’s develop an app to help people manage this.”
Respirate supplements pulmonary rehabilitation, a program of exercise and education for people who have COPD and other respiratory illnesses.
In addition to showing people how to perform various exercises, the app includes to-do lists, reminders and motivational messages. It also helps people calculate their body mass index (BMI) to determine how much body fat they have and how they can bring it down.
The app can be downloaded on the Google Play Store for use on Android devices.
The Enloe students are members of the Wake County magnet school’s health sciences academy. It’s among 644 academies nationwide sponsored by NAF, a nonprofit organization that has placed small academies in high schools.
Teams from more than 100 NAF academies submitted apps for this year’s competition. Respirate was among six national winners announced in May, leading to the online “Fan Favorite” competition.
Respirate beat out apps that offered functions such as helping students deal with going through puberty, helping people overcome their fears of public speaking and helping people track their pace through a run. The victory means Li and Virk won state-of-the-art technology from Lenovo, along with recognition that will help them as they continue to develop the app.
Possible upgrades include offering Respirate in more languages and seeing whether it can be offered on Apple devices.
This is the second year in a row that a team from Enloe has won the Fan Favorite vote. Last year’s winning Enloe team developed an app that shows users how to use CPR during an emergency to save the life of a person whose heart has stopped.
Virk said he and Li have friends from last year’s winning team who offered advice as they developed Respirate. Virk said a second Enloe team that competed this year rallied around them to urge people to vote for Respirate in the Fan Vote.
“It wasn’t one team winning,” Virk said. “It was Enloe winning. That’s what really sets us apart.”