Prana
A modular, portable product system for holistic respiratory monitoring
Product-system, Accessible Healthcare
ROLE
Product Designer
TIMEFRAME
6 months | 2025
TEAM
INDQ Product Design Studio
SKILLS
User Experience, UI Design, Industrial Design, Prototyping
OVERVIEW
How do we bring holistic respiratory care home?
Mapping the full patient journey, not just a device, from first symptom to doctor visit.
Moving from foam mockups to a functional, 3D-printed working prototype.
Balancing clinical accuracy, cost, and patient usability at every step.
PROBLEM
Respiratory care is fragmented, and patients are paying for it.
Respiratory illness is rising sharply. Delhi saw outpatient visits for conditions like bronchitis jump 40-50%, and AIIMS Delhi logged a 15-20% increase in asthma and COPD cases in a single year. Yet patients are still managing this with a spirometer here, an oximeter there, and a nebulizer with no shared data trail.
That fragmentation shows up as real friction: patients can't tell if a reading is good or bad, devices are poorly calibrated, appointments take long waits to get and even longer to interpret, and doctors are stuck piecing together a full picture from scattered numbers. Every routine check becomes another hospital trip for something that could happen at home.
OPPORTUNITY
Modularity as the new standard for home respiratory care.
Every one of these tools (spirometer, oximeter, capnograph, nebulizer) is used one at a time, never simultaneously. That single insight opens up a very different design direction than "one device that does everything."
Patients buy only the modules they actually need, not four separate devices.
One connected system means one continuous record, instead of scattered readings across devices.
Translating clinical data into something patients can interpret themselves, without a nurse in the room.
Solution
A modular hardware system combining spirometer, oximeter, capnograph, and nebulizer functions. Patients attach only what they need onto a shared base.
The Prana app logs every session, generates a color-coded severity report (styled after traffic-light logic, not raw clinical numbers), and lets patients share results with a doctor or caregiver directly.
CORE FLOWS
Snap-in, swap-out — one base, four functions
Walking patients through spirometry, oximetry, and capnography without a nurse in the room
The app follows a simple colour coding system similar to traffic lights for a patient to easily understand the severity of their health condition
The Prana app creates an integrated report including comparison of a patient's condition before and after nebulisation, severity classification, parameters & graphs as required by doctors.
Although the device is integrated with the app, the device provides independent use during emergency situations by switching to manual mode
Key Design Moments
Early concepts explored a single compact integrated device and a version with one shared cap across sensors. The team landed on a modular system instead, reasoning that each sensor is only ever used one at a time, never simultaneously, so a shared modular base let patients buy only the modules relevant to their condition, cutting cost without cutting function.
The order of testing - spirometer, then oximeter, then capnograph, with nebulization as an optional step in between — was deliberately sequenced so results could be compared pre- and post-treatment, giving patients (and doctors) a clearer signal of whether treatment was working.
Concept validation started with thermocol/foam mockups to test ergonomics and proportions by hand before any digital modeling. Once the form was validated, the team worked with a mechanical engineer to rebuild it precisely in Rhino/Fusion 360, then layered in CMF detailing, button placement, and interface layout.
A recurring design decision was translating clinical data into something non-clinical patients could trust and understand — the traffic-light severity coding, guided on-device breathing instructions per module, and clear pre/post visual comparisons all serve this same goal: lowering user confusion and anxiety around interpreting their own health data.
Impact
What this project did deliver was a fully working, 3D-printed functional prototype, proof that a modular system combining four separate respiratory tools was not just a concept sketch but an actual buildable product. That mattered most against the backdrop the project was designed for: a sharp, documented rise in respiratory cases across Delhi hospitals in 2024, with patients having no real way to monitor their own condition between visits.
What I learned
Designing trust into clinical data
The hardest part of this project may not have been the hardware, but translating raw medical readings into something a scared, uninformed patient could interpret correctly — that's a distinct design problem from most consumer product work.
Systems thinking over feature thinking
Building the six-phase service blueprint before designing any single screen suggests the real unlock was treating this as an end-to-end patient journey rather than a device + app project.
Designing with clinicians, not just for patients.
A patient needs simplicity; a clinician needs precision. Regular meetings with clinicians were held to make sure only verified health parameters made it into the product, keeping features like the severity color-coding simple for patients without losing clinical accuracy.
