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Background: Respiratory rate (RR) is an important vital sign used in the initial and ongoing assessment of acutely ill children. It is also used as a predictor of serious deterioration in a patient9s clinical condition. Convenient electronic devices exist for measurement of pulse, blood pressure, oxygen saturation and temperature. Although devices which measure RR exist, none has entered everyday clinical practice. Aims: We have developed a contactless portable respiratory rate monitor (CPRM) and aimed to evaluate the agreement in RR measurements between existing methods and our new device. Method: RR data were collected from 30 children undergoing polysomnography sleep studies at a tertiary children9s hospital. The RR of each participant was measured simultaneously by 3 different methods. Respiratory impedance plethysmography (RIP) the established contact method and gold standard. Visual counting of chest movements, and method used most in clinical settings. The contactless portable respiratory monitor (CPRM), which is the new method. Two data sets were collected from each child. Results: Data showed substantial agreement between measurements from the CPRM and the gold standard RIP, with intra-class correlation coefficient: 0.762, mean difference -0.212 and 95% limits of agreement of -6.842 to 6.419. Conclusion: A contactless device for accurately and quickly measuring RR will be an important tool in the assessment of unwell children. More testing is needed to explore the reasons for outlying measurements and to evaluate in different clinical settings. Further development and modification of the device and software are ongoing.

Background: Respiratory rate (RR) is a vital physiological measurement used in the immediate assessment of acutely ill patients. It is used as a predictor of serious deterioration in a patient's clinical condition. Convenient electronic devices exist for measurement of pulse, blood pressure, oxygen saturation and temperature. Although devices which measure RR exist, none has entered everyday clinical practice. We have developed a contactless portable respiratory rate monitor (CPRM). We aimed to measure agreement with existing methods of RR measurement. Method: RR data were collected from 33 adult volunteers using respiratory impedance plethysmography (RIP) bands (established contact method), visual counting of chest movements (established non-contact method) and the CPRM (new method), simultaneously. Two to three data sets were collected for each volunteer. Results: Data showed good agreement between measurements from the CPRM and the gold standard RIP with limits of agreement -4.6 – 7.8. Conclusion: A contactless device for accurately and quickly measuring RR will be an important tool in the assessment of unwell children. More testing is needed to explore reasons for outlying measurements and to evaluate in the paediatric population. Further development and modification of the device and software are planned.