'I enjoy creating things that make people's lives better'
Alison McConnell is professor of applied physiology at Brunel University's Centre for Sports Medicine and Human Performance.
"A number of years ago, I coined a phrase, 'dumb-bells for the diaphragm', and that sums up POWERbreathe in a nutshell. It involves applying resistance training techniques for the muscles we use to breathe.
Previously, these muscles weren't considered to be a factor in limiting exercise tolerance, but in the past few years, we've realised they do have a role and that even in people with healthy lungs, you can see improvements in their performance as a result of using POWERbreathe.
The reason it came about is because my interest lies in developing assistive technologies for improving athletes' performance and also in applying the things we learn from athletes to other populations, such as patients. Indeed, the technology is now an approved prescription for breathlessness, so it's cascaded across a wide range of potential users.
Perhaps the most enjoyable thing about my role is taking something as a hypothesis based on some insight from my work around physiology and creating something that allows you to answer some key research questions and make peoples' lives better.
Over the past four years, I've been working very closely with the company that now owns the POWERbreathe brand and we've developed a new electronic product. It's all-singing all-dancing in that it provides a lot more functionality and also an assessment tool.
The thing people often used to say about POWERbreathe was: 'I know I can breathe against a heavier load now, but I'd really like to be able to quantify how much better I'm getting'.
So, among other things, the new device allows people to assess the function of their breathing muscles, and either have the instrument set an appropriate training load for them or manually set it themselves - and then monitor their progress."
The new device Professor McConnell refers to is the new POWERbreathe Kinetic series.
Click here to read more about POWERbreathe Kinetic >