Encore Pro Analyzer for BiPAPs

[jskinner]

Thanks for the excellent feedback. Here are some comments:

If you look at the Encore Pro daily details at the bottom you see the events per hour broken between IPAP and EPAP and the events (IPAP-FL,VS,NR,H and EPAP-VS,NR,OA).

Internally Encore Pro keeps track of events for IPAP and EPAP separately. Am I understanding correctly that instead of one combined it would be useful to have three separate pressure vrs AHI, etc charts? One for CPAP/APAP, IPAP, & EPAP

What these metrics are needs to be determined and then look to see if the database has the appropriate data to measure. I would get a committee of experience folks to determine what metrics would be nice.

I vote for you to head that committee

a. Leak rate: mask vs. actual vs. pressure. You would have to have a mechanism for the user to enter his masks standard leak rate for say 4 pressure points.

Leak rate vrs pressure should be pretty easy to implement if everyone agrees its useful? Which leak rate, max, 90%, avg (maybe all of them on a line chart?)

I can also see how entering the mask leak rate would be useful. I'll add it to my growing "to do/explore" list but don't expect anything on that one soon.

b. Leak: daily average vs. running average(time period).

Note sure I understand this one. Please explain more.

c. Improvement Trend for Avg AHI vs. pressure settings. For cpap this would be the single pressure setting. for auto it would be the range, for bipap it would be the two pressures and for auto bipap it would be the range.

Interesting. That does sound useful. How about the following:

CPAP - AHI vs Pressure.
APAP - AHI vs Pressure & Range vs Pressure
BiPAP - IPAP AHI vs Pressure, EPAP AHI vs Pressure, (is combined useful or not at all?)
Auto BiPAP - IPAP AHI vs Pressure, EPAP AHI vs Pressure, IPAP Range vs Pressure, EPAP Range vs Pressure

A lot of work but doable (I think)

4. Selectable time period for data measurement.

Yeah its on my list This one is pretty high priority for me now as a lot of people have asked and I would find it useful. Now that I have some basic BiPAP support I will be working on this or Daily Report next probably.

[curtcurt46]

James,
Here the comments you asked for:
I don't think tracking the events per hour that I mentioned is work much. I refer to the beta under pressure for your choice of AHI or OAI. These numbers are what I was talking about as being skewed and are therefore useless.

Reference comment para a. actual mask rate vs. actual leak at various pressures. This way one you could see if the leak increases with pressure.

b.compare the daily average leak to the average of the daily leaks over a measured period.

c. give it a try and we can look at it.
Hope this helps. I am happy to look and give comments. One last thing. Once you have a beta 2 release, I recommend we really look hard at each chart to make sure it has meaningful data, a kind of murder board.

[jskinner]

James,
I don't think tracking the events per hour that I mentioned is work much.

Not sure what you mean by this comment? Are you saying that its not much work to implement the alternate pressures graphs for IPAP, EPAP, Range, etc?

Reference comment para a. actual mask rate vs. actual leak at various pressures. This way one you could see if the leak increases with pressure.

I only have average leak rates over a range of seconds at a given pressure. Best I could do would be go do pressure vrs average leak rate at that pressure. ok?

b.compare the daily average leak to the average of the daily leaks over a measured period.

Oh I think I see. So for any given day the chart bar might be above or below the average. So the Y axis zero would be the average value?

c. give it a try and we can look at it.

As I mentioned, implementing this is a fair amount of work. I think it sounds like a good idea but I'm not about to spend that much time on it unless there is a consensus that this is a good idea.

Once you have a beta 2 release, I recommend we really look hard at each chart to make sure it has meaningful data, a kind of murder board.

Thats what betas are all about

[sinkem]

Hi James,
Your software worked great for my BiPAP auto data.

I think you are on the right track with separate charts for IPAP data vs pressure and EPAP data vs pressure. This will allow finding the two "sweet spots" (IPAP's and EPAP's).

Your work on adding a data date range will be useful too. By looking at a snap shot in time we can see if we have adjusted the settings correctly.

Thanks for all of your hard work.

Greg

_________________

CPAPopedia Keywords Contained In This Post (Click For Definition): bipap, auto

[jskinner]

I think you are on the right track with separate charts for IPAP data vs pressure and EPAP data vs pressure. This will allow finding the two "sweet spots" (IPAP's and EPAP's).

Greg,

Would you be looking for IPAP/EPAP Pressure vs AHI only or would you want in IPAP/EPAP pressure vrs Hours, FLI, and SI as well?

I assume that the AHI one would be the most important

-James

[curtcurt46]

James,
My comments on your questions.
In Encore Pro, on the daily details, the chart at the bottom that is called daily events per hour is where the data is I am commenting on. This is the data that I said is shewed and has little meaning that I can determine. I also think the Encore Pro Analyzer is using the same data on the pressure vs, OAI and AHI(2 separate charts). As an example, last night the daily events per hour (encore pro)shows OA of 3.5 at the EPAP pressure of 10. I was at this pressure for 17 minutes out of a total of 464 minutes. My OI for the entire night was 1.0. What I am saying is that to draw any meaning at the various pressure points is beyond me and my ability to understand or draw any conclusions.

The question on leak rates...
If you do avg leak over a given pressure would work. It might be nice to be able to input a persons mask leak rate into the program so they could see...mask leak rate vs. avg leak vs pressure. Having the mask rate involves a lot of work on your part and in the long run might not be worth the effort. It's just a thought.
You are the final word on what goes and doesn't go. I only offer ideas which are cheap and you have to decide what is doable and not.
The product you have so far seems easier to us that My Encore.
Thanks for your hard work and efforts.

[jskinner]

The question on leak rates...
If you do avg leak over a given pressure would work. It might be nice to be able to input a persons mask leak rate into the program so they could see...mask leak rate vs. avg leak vs pressure.

Seems to me like you would have to have the mask leak rate included to get any meaning data from a pressure vrs leak graph. I mean raising the pressure is always going to increase the leak rate (by definition) Unless you remove that increase in mask leak variable charting it's not going to say much?

Or am I missing something?

[curtcurt46]

James,
I was thinking of someone that's on an auto and if they could see the pressure at which the leaks start getting bad, then they could make their own analysis to see if they wanted to correct or not. For instance, a cpaper on an auto 9-14 sees a leak starting at 14 of which they were at that pressure for 4 minutes. They decide it my not be worth the effort to correct and the leak really doesn't impact the therapy. Now you get avg leak, 90% leak, and max leak for a given date. The allows you to look at the trend whereas the the leak vs. pressure let you see where the problem pressure might be.
Hope this helps.

[cwsanfor]

the dataset selector should be there already...

It is. My bad. I think I had a high AHI the night before.

I think you've met or exceeded the functionality in MyEncore. I think several comments about selecting the time frame, everything curtcurt46 said, and others are good comments: but I also know you have time limitations and how scope creep can be. I mean with enough of your time you could have completely user-selectable charts, where we picked and X and Y parameters and displayed the resultant chart, but that's a whole other level of effort, and not all charts are going to be useful.

What I'd like is more feedback from some of the old timers here (who have greater apnea/xPAP expertise than me) on which charts are clinically useful. I know one frequent contributor who does not use add-ons to EncorePro, and sleep lab professionals probably are used to Rembrandt, Alice, or such, but it would seem useful to draw on their expertise and let you focus on the code. I'll post screen shots if it would help to get expert users who don't use MyEncore to evaluate.

Is it useful to you to have a client file for someone using BiPAP, or can you tell what you need from the database?

[jskinner]

Is it useful to you to have a client file for someone using BiPAP, or can you tell what you need from the database?

It is very useful. I have a couple now but the more I have the easier it makes my testing in different scenarios with different data sets.

[Moogy]

James,

I keep getting this error message every time I try to change the length of time shown on the charts:

Unhandled exception has occurred in your application...

Invalid object name 'SleepTrendEventLog2.'

Am I doing something wrong? If I tell the computer to continue, the program seems to go on with no problem.

I don't see the separate graphs that show AHI v. Pressure for IPAP/EPAP, which someone mentioned. Am I missing something?

Thanks for all you work. This is a great product, and I know you must have put a LOT of work into it.

Moogy

[jskinner]

I keep getting this error message every time I try to change the length of time shown on the charts:
Unhandled exception has occurred in your application...
Invalid object name 'SleepTrendEventLog2.'

Few questions:

1. Do you get the error on startup too?

2. What version of Encore Pro are you using? It looks like you might have an older version than 1.6.22?

3. If you do have the correct version, can you press the details button on the error box and post or PM me the details of the error?

Am I doing something wrong?

Nope its either an Encore Pro version issue or a bug. (Guess I should add some code so that it will not run if the Encore Pro version is old, or make it work with older version )

I don't see the separate graphs that show AHI v. Pressure for IPAP/EPAP, which someone mentioned. Am I missing something?

Its been discussed but I haven't added that feature yet. Its about 3 or 4 on my 'to do' list now Shouldn't be too hard to implement once I get to it ...

[Moogy]

[
1. Do you get the error on startup too?

2. What version of Encore Pro are you using? It looks like you might have an older version than 1.6.22?

3. If you do have the correct version, can you press the details button on the error box and post or PM me the details of the error?

1. Yes

2. Version 1.5.82, which is the version I purchased from cpap.com about 7-8 months ago.

3. Since I don't have the 'correct' version, I won't send the error details now, but let me know if you need them.

I do hope you can get the program to work with my version of EncorePro, since I would hate to have to spend more money to upgrade it this soon.

Thanks,
Moogy

[Guest]

3. Since I don't have the 'correct' version, I won't send the error details now, but let me know if you need them.

From what I have seen it may not be too hard to get my software working with Encore pro 1.5. (although I can't say for sure at this point) I've actually already started to include some code to do thing differently based on version of Encore Pro. If you willing to be a guinea pig I can send you some private builds to try to fix the outstanding issues? I've been meaning to work on 1.5 compatability for a few days now but can never seem to find the extra time...