Home oxygen tube management

Problem statement

Long-term oxygen therapy (LTOT) is prescribed to roughly 1.5 million patients in the US annually, most commonly for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), pulmonary fibrosis, and cystic fibrosis. Patients typically qualify when resting blood oxygen saturation falls to 88% or below. Because oxygen therapy manages symptoms rather than curing the underlying condition, many patients depend on it for years — which means the everyday safety of the delivery system matters as much as the medicine itself.

Existing tube management approaches all reduce one problem while introducing another — none fully solve tripping, kinking, and daily usability at once.

All of these sit downstream of the same core delivery systems — stationary concentrators, portable concentrators, compressed gas cylinders, and liquid oxygen — each with its own tradeoffs in flow rate, weight, and portability. The tubing interface between these sources and the patient is where the real opportunity for improvement sits.

The proposed Total Home Oxygen System moves away from one long tube the patient manages themselves, and instead distributes oxygen through fixed tubing routed along the walls of the home, branching into a "port" in each high-frequency room (bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, living room, and similar spaces). The user connects a short 6–10 foot tube to the port in whichever room they're in, and simply disconnects and reconnects when they move to another room.

This approach removes the long trailing hose entirely, cuts reliance on heavy portable concentrators, and avoids the added complexity of a motorized reel — while still giving the patient full mobility within each room they occupy.

Home oxygen delivery equipment falls under FDA medical device regulation, which shapes packaging, labeling, and sterilization requirements for any tubing and hardware in the system.