Improving the quality of life of people with respiratory insufficiency

The Severe Respiratory Insufficiency (SRI) Questionnaire Project and the SRI Application

Project overview

Thanks to advances in medicine, more and more people with severe respiratory insufficiency are able to cope with everyday life outside of hospital - but they are dependent on oxygen or ventilation. As many of these patients are in the final stages of their illness, the focus is on maintaining their health-related quality of life (HRQL).

Reliable instruments are needed to record health-related quality of life (HRQL) in large studies. To this end, Prof Dr Windisch developed the SRI questionnaire (SRI stands for Severe Respiratory Insufficiency) and published it for the first time in 2003 - originally in German. The questionnaire is now used as the main measure in clinical studies and is available in around 20 languages and as an app for mobile devices.

Further information

Responsible: Chair of Pneumology
Project partner: German Respiratory Tract League
Further information on the website of the Respiratory Tract League.

The SRI app

In cooperation with the Deutsche Atemwegsliga e. V., the UW/H research team has developed an SRI app to complement the questionnaire, which is available in more than 20 languages and thus often allows patients to enter their data in their native language. The free app for smartphones and tablets is based on the questionnaire and helps patients to digitally record and monitor their health data.

For data protection reasons, it is not necessary to use the patient's real name. With the patient's consent, doctors and researchers can use the data for studies worldwide to learn more about how treatments affect the quality of life of patients with severe respiratory failure. These findings are crucial for the development of new therapies and treatment methods.

The German Respiratory Society is making the SRI questionnaire and all translations available free of charge to promote international research and practice. The app was published in the specialist journal "Thorax", and the original article in the "Journal of Clinical Epidemiology". The project was honoured and follow-up projects are already being funded.

Selected publications

Windisch W, Freidel K, Schucher B, Baumann H, Wiebel M, Matthys H, Petermann F. The Severe Respiratory Insufficiency (SRI) Questionnaire: a specific measure of health-related quality of life in patients receiving home mechanical ventilation. J Clin Epidemiol. 2003 Aug;56(8):752-9. doi: 10.1016/s0895-4356(03)00088-x. PMID: 12954467.
Majorski DS, Schwarz SB, Magnet FS, Ahmad R, Mathes T, Windisch W. The Severe Respiratory Insufficiency Application (SRI App): a pilot randomised controlled trial. Thorax. 2021 Mar 2;76(8):832-4. doi: 10.1136/thoraxjnl-2020-216319. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 33653932; PMCID: PMC8311098.

Project management