Sample Health Plan · Lung Health
Breathe easy.
Pursed-lip breathing slows your breath and helps you feel less short of breath. Follow the circle. In through your nose. Out slowly, like blowing out a candle.
Breathing pacer
Ready when you are
Sit down. Relax your shoulders. Press Start.
Session: 2:00
Your settings
Purse your lips like you’re about to whistle or blow out a candle. Breathe out twice as long as you breathe in. Don’t force the air out.
How do you feel now?
One tap. This helps you see what works for you.
⚠ When to get help
This exercise helps, but it doesn’t replace your medicine or your COPD action plan. Use your rescue inhaler as your care team told you.
Call 911 if you:
- Can’t catch your breath, even after resting and using your rescue inhaler
- Can’t speak in full sentences
- Have lips or fingernails that look blue or gray
- Have chest pain, or feel confused or very drowsy
Breathing harder than usual for a day or more? Call your care team or the Sample Health Plan nurse line: (555) 010-0155, any time.
Why this works
| Evidence basis | Pursed-lip breathing is a standard part of COPD self-management education taught by pulmonary rehabilitation programs and lung health organizations; it slows the breathing rate and helps people manage breathlessness during activity. Paced visual and audio cues make the technique easier to follow. Simple self-reports (“easier / same / harder”) support self-monitoring. |
|---|---|
| BCTs | 4.1 Instruction on how to perform the behavior · 6.1 Demonstration of the behavior · 8.1 Behavioral practice/rehearsal · 2.3 Self-monitoring of behavior · 2.7 Feedback on outcomes of behavior · 11.2 Reduce negative emotions. |
| COM-B target | Capability (physical + psychological): doing the technique correctly. Motivation (automatic): calming anxiety. Opportunity: always on the phone, works offline. |
| Accessibility | Same script drives animation, captions, voice, and vibration. Calm mode replaces motion with text + a bar (on automatically if your device asks for reduced motion). No flashing. Large controls. Works with keyboard and screen readers (phase changes announced, not every count). |
| Persona | “Mae, 66” — COPD, panics when breathless on stairs, hard to read small text when anxious. Simulated persona testing (not patients) moved the safety box above the fold on mobile and replaced “exhale” with “breathe out.” |
| How HealthLiteracyCopilot would make it | From a pulmonary handout, HealthLiteracyCopilot would extract the technique (ratio, cues, safety signs), generate a single timed script, render it as an interactive coach plus audio and print versions, and check it against locked clinical facts and the plan’s COPD action plan. |
| What a pilot would measure | Sessions started/completed, “easier” check-in rate, nurse-line calls after “harder,” COPD-related ED visits and readmissions (measured by the organization in its own systems), CAT score change in care-management programs. Measures a pilot would track, not results or promised effects. |