I’m an NHS doctor and the founder of Pia (https://www.piahealth.co) which developed Lungy (https://www.lungy.app). Lungy is an iOS app that responds to breathing in real-time and was designed to make breathing exercises more engaging and beneficial to do. It’s been two years since Lungy launched (here’s the original ShowHN: https://www.hackerneue.com/item?id=34534615) and it's had a huge update and complete redesign. We rebuilt the whole app, and added a real-time 3D soft body solver which gives some really cool interactions like blobs / objects that inflate as you breathe. We also made a version for Vision Pro, called 'Lungy Spaces'.
My background is as a surgical trainee and I started building Lungy in 2020 during the first COVID lockdown in London. During COVID, there were huge numbers of patients coming off ventilators and patients are often given breathing exercises on a worksheet and disposable plastic devices called incentive spirometers to encourage deep breathing. This is intended to prevent chest infections and strengthen breathing muscles that have weakened. I noticed often the incentive spirometer would sit by the bedside, whilst the patient would be on their phone – this was the spark that lead to Lungy!
Since making the first version we’ve made exercises fully customisable (you can dial in exact timings for each breath phase), added new breathing indicators, learning modules, e.g. self-care for anxiety symptoms, and lots of new visuals. The free version gives you access to a new breathing exercise each day, whilst premium unlocks the full library of exercises, exercise data and visuals..
The visuals are mostly built using Metal (a couple use SpriteKit) and there are lots to choose from - boids, cloth sims, fluid sims, a hacky DLA implementation, rigid body + soft body sims - each one reacts to breath and touch. The audio uses AudioKit with a polyphonic synth and a sequencer plays generated notes from a chosen scale (you can mess around with the sequencer and synth in Settings/Create Music). The nice thing about the visuals + audio being generative is that the download size is relatively small with no other downloads. We’re still working on improving the breath detection, using ML - currently, it uses microphone input, with optional camera input to guide positioning.
We’re also close to finishing the medical device version - http://lungy.health - designed as a pulmonary rehab platform for patients with asthma, it should hopefully undergo early trials in the UK in 2026.
Thanks for reading - would love to hear any feedback!
Lungy Version 2 here: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1545223887
* Why am I in gray? It's a reasonable thing to ask about an app with no server-side expenses.
That said, there is a lifetime access option, so no subscription, and the free version is good too.
Oh, common, don't twist the question, that's disingenuous. Not "a premium version". Why is it a subscription.
Why do think making people make recurrent payments for an otherwise static non-service app is reasonable?
$60 for a "lifetime" version is super steep, considering it's in the walled garden of the App Store, can't be backed up, can't be re-installed if it somehow disappears from the store, etc. For a desktop software it could potentially fly, but not for an iOS app.
For better or worse (mostly worse) developing an iPhone app isn't like making software for Windows XP where you ship it and it's done and will still run 20 years later with no additional work. There will no doubt be ongoing expenses and continued development work to keep it functional on new devices and new OS versions. So I get why subscriptions are a thing (especially since Apple has never allowed for paid upgrade pricing), the part I don't get is how so many of them think I want to spend $15/month forever on an IoT toaster that will revolutionize my bagel experience with AI.
Only the customers can tell this person if $60 is too much. If yure upset because it’s more than you would pay - say that. Otherwise you’re really just asking for a Porsche at the price of a Honda.
Is this what you should have said, without couching in a way that makes it sound “official”? https://www.hackerneue.com/item?id=44349932
Isn't that legitimate to question a trend you disagree with? Especially on a web _forum_?
Of course a business will cater to the lucrative platform first or even exclusively.
And now, go ahead, downvote me as much as you want. Won't change the calculus though.
An alternative PoV from me could be that going cross-platform means you can use the "rich users" iOS sales to subsidize the "poverty users" Android sales, same how our society does it with healthcare.
Yep, it has been tricky to get over the line as a medical device and used in the NHS, hence the focus more on wellness initially.
[0] https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/alphabet-acquires-seno...
This sounds great. Maybe there could also be something to help people support an asthma attack, or a beginning one. Breathing can be hard folks.
Mostly saying this, because this brought up memories of a situation where a woman on a bus had the beginnings of an asthmatic attack and then realized she didn't have her inhalator on her and started to stress out. The poor bus driver had no idea what do to and also started to panic. So I ended up just being here, helping her remember techniques like the coachman seat, pursed lip breathing, all while I was kinda fighting that on one hand, my inhalator is an entirely standard inhalator, but on the same time, handing out prescription medication like that can be really, really dangerous.
Give this[1] a read, it's good to now :)
1: https://www.pari.com/int/blog/breathing-excercise-asthma/
So, the health version will more be a collection of simple interventions which hopefully improve symptom control and quality of life, more day-to-day control than in asthma attacks.
Having had an incentive spirometer prescribed for post-surgical use after being on bypass, my experience was that it seemed boring and like a waste of time, so anything that makes breathing exercises more engaging and feel more worthwhile is a win.
edit: Having any medical-adjacent app collect any data for the use of advertising (according to the app page) seems really wrong.
The wellness version only creates an anonymised token to track installs - no other data is shared. The medical device version will be a separate app.
[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39477355/
It's less 'cognitive' than other apps, but a few studies have shown breathing exercises are as effective for stress as guided meditation, but also much simpler to follow [0]. I'm always slightly surprised at how effective breathing is in helping relaxation - although it obviously makes a lot of physiological sense. So, Lungy is designed to make a practice simple / fun to do each day.
[0] https://med.stanford.edu/news/insights/2023/02/cyclic-sighin...
Great idea and ux
A quick example : "detection de l'haleine" instead of "detection du souffle".
"Haleine" in french is mostly used to mean the "smell" of the breath. And i found examples like this in almost every screen.
If you notice any more typos / terrible translations please send to hello [at] lungy [dot] app and I'll get them fixed. Thank you!
I just tried v1 again, it blocks me from using it because it wants the microphone but I don’t want to give access. Can you make it optional in settings? Just following the visual is enough for me.
Don’t think it needed it when I used it. Does v2 also have the same issue?