A recent article in Medgadget featured an interview with Harry Bullivant of UK-based The Technology Partnership to discuss a new gas-sensing technology that could have uses in the field of respiratory technology.

The device, called SonicSense, measures the speed of sound in gas to determine its composition, Bullivant said in the interview, continuing to say that he thinks “the technology has great potential to disrupt a broad range of healthcare sensing applications such as respiratory monitoring, capnography, anaesthesia, and COPD monitoring.”

SonicSense measures the frequency of a volume of vibrating air, Bullivant said. The device is being examined for use across several fields in health care, such as “the clinical benefits of dramatically reducing the cost of capnography (monitoring exhaled CO2) to the point where it is as ubiquitous as pulse oximetry.”

For those interested in using SonicSense for respiratory technology, costs can be cut from $100 and $200 for carbon dioxide sensors and paramagnetic oxygen sensors, respectively, down to $5 to $10.