Superior Oxygen’s Life Choice

• By Elisha Bury
• Jul 01, 2008

When it comes to oxygen equipment, Superior Oxygen Systems’ Daryl Dumala knows what patients want — choice. In fact, choice was the primary motivation for the team at Superior, which set out to develop a portable oxygen concentrator that aligns with the active lifestyle that baby boomers have come to expect.

To make portability viable, Life Choice weighs in at just under 5 pounds. It’s built to serve as a complete unit, meaning both portable and stationary use. To accomplish this, the POC uses two compressors that last approximately 100,000 hours, though the company guarantees the compressors for three years. The unit requires no maintenance and comes with a four-hour external battery.

Perhaps the most outstanding feature of Life Choice is the Sleep Mode technology. “We brought the sensitivity levels with the user-friendly apparatus, so when they hit the Sleep Mode, they’re able to trigger at a very shallow breath,” Dumala says. With this mode, the POC truly can be used 24 hours a day.

Dumala has worked in the HME industry as a provider for a number of years and has witnessed many patients tethered to oxygen in their homes. “They always ask me, ‘When is technology going to catch up?’ “ he says. “From reviewing all of the different POCs from that timeframe, we needed something that the patient wanted to use and felt like now I have something I can go out and do things with and have a life again.”

Designed to get patients motivated to use their oxygen therapy, Life Choice incorporates a sleek, non-medical design. The controls and keypad are user-friendly and easy to read. The POC is a pulse mode system with settings at 10, 20 and 30 milliliters (1-3 lpm continuous equivalent).
“Long-term oxygen therapy is what it is — long-term oxygen therapy,” Dumala says. “(Patients) are going to be attached to this device and it should work efficiently and (fit) well into (their) lifestyles.”

But Superior Oxygen isn’t allowing the device to speak for itself. Dumala says he wants a proven product. The company is in the process of working on several white papers that involve Life Choice, including one with Baylor Martha Foster Lung Care Center in Dallas. The paper will show how the POC functions in pulmonary rehabilitation.

Though the white papers will take some time to be published, the device itself should be to market in the next 45 to 60 days.

This article originally appeared in the July 2008 issue of HME Business.