Products, Performance, and Technological Development of Ambulatory Oxygen Therapy Devices: Scoping Review

TL;DR

This study reviews ambulatory oxygen therapy devices, comparing their performance, technologies, and development to identify gaps and opportunities for improvement.

Contribution

The first systematic integration of medical, engineering, and gray literature on ambulatory oxygen devices and their development.

Findings

Portable oxygen concentrators (POCs) trade portability for oxygen delivery capacity, with a mean continuous operating time of 3.8 hours.

LOX devices offer superior performance but are limited by high costs.

Innovation in ambulatory oxygen technology has been limited over the past decade, highlighting a need for new lightweight devices.

Abstract

Ambulatory oxygen therapy is prescribed for patients with chronic lung diseases who experience exertional hypoxemia. However, available devices may not adequately meet user requirements, and their performance characteristics are heterogeneous.

This study aims to identify devices available for delivery of ambulatory oxygen therapy, the technologies that they use to generate oxygen, the performance characteristics of each device, and the development status.

We used medical and engineering databases to identify peer-reviewed papers (eg, MEDLINE, IEEE). Gray literature was used to identify additional descriptions of ambulatory oxygen devices in military medicine, space exploration, or patents. The last search was conducted in September 2025. Documents that described a device that can deliver oxygen in an ambulatory context (defined as weighing less than 10 kg) and were written in English were included. Search results were screened for inclusion by 2 independent reviewers. Data were synthesized by descriptively mapping the performance of each product, the technology used, and the development status of emerging technologies.

From 9702 records identified, a total of 166 met eligibility criteria (106 scientific publications and 60 gray literature). We identified 33 portable oxygen concentrators (POCs; 29 commercially available), 10 oxygen cylinders, and 6 portable liquid oxygen (LOX) devices. The POC products showed a trade-off between portability and oxygen delivery capacity (maximum flow rate ranging from 2.0 to 6.0 L/min; device weight ranging from 1.0 to 9.1 kg). Pressure swing adsorption with zeolite was the most common oxygen generation technology in POCs on the market. The mean maximum continuous operating time of POCs was 3.8 hours. Two prototype POCs (maximum flow rate of 4-6 L/min and device weight of 8-9 kg) were developed for space exploration using modified adsorbents. LOX devices were the lightest and had the longest continuous operating time. Innovations in delivery included the downsizing of a POC by using nanozeolite as an adsorbent and pulse oximeter oxygen saturation (SpO2)–targeted automatic titration of oxygen delivery based on the user’s SpO2.

This scoping review is the first study to integrate medical, engineering, and gray literature on ambulatory oxygen devices and their development. Although prior literature has narratively explained the products and technologies, no previous research has systematically investigated them. This review showed that POCs available to consumers may not meet the needs of patients in terms of flow rate, portability, and operating time. LOX devices offered superior performance but are limited by high costs. Limitations of this review include the difficulty of comparing product performance across oxygen delivery settings and that the records were largely obtained from English-language sources. Innovation in ambulatory oxygen technology has been limited over the past decade, highlighting urgent need for research and development of new lightweight devices with higher oxygen delivery.

OSF Registries 10.17605/OSF.IO/QS7FX; https://osf.io/qs7fx

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