IG received travel support from AstraZeneca; and was funded by Research Foundation Flanders (Fundamental Research Fellowship, grant 11N3922N). WJ receives funding from Research Foundation Flanders and KU Leuven Bijzonder onderzoeksfonds and their laboratory is funded through the Chiesi Chair on Phenotyping and individualized therapy in COPD; he received consulting fees from Chiesi, Roche, Sanofi, GSK, and AstraZeneca; and is a co-founder of ArtiQ (AI tools for the automated interpretation and quality optimization of lung function data), but currently holds no position or financial interest in the company. HH is funded by Research Foundation Flanders (Strategic Basic Research Fellowship, grant 1S30225N). MDV is funded by Research Foundation Flanders (Research Project: ‘Artificial Intelligence [AI] for data-driven personalised medicine’ G0C9623N) and by the Horizon Funding Programme (HORIZON-HLTH-2022-IND-13); and received consulting fees from ArtiQ and Clario. We thank our respective institutions for the resources and support provided. This work was conducted independently, and no external funding sources had any influence on the conceptualisation or preparation of this manuscript.