Pacemakers get linked to smartphones

LONDON: British doctors have become the first in the world to fit heart patients with pacemakers connected to their smartphones.

The medical breakthrough means patients can track their heart rate and exercise levels through the device in their chest and check how much battery life it has left wherever they are.

The smart pacemakers send the information, through Bluetooth, straight to a smartphone app.

Before, patients had to visit their doctor every few months to get data read-outs on how their pacemaker was performing.

Now the new generation of pacemakers produce daily updates so doctors can pick up irregularities remotely and switch patients to blood-thinning drugs more quickly.

The app also allows patients to record their symptoms, weight and blood pressure.

Smart pacemakers have taken years to develop because the information they transmit needed to be encrypted and unhackable.

But the first patients, including three men and a woman in their 70s, were last week given the devices at Southampton General Hospital and the Royal Stoke University Hospital.

Dr Paul Roberts, a consultant cardiologist at University Hospital Southampton (UHS) NHS Foundation Trust, where the first smart pacemakers were used, said: “Smart pacemakers are the future and provide peace of mind for patients, whose number one question to cardiologists tends to be how much battery they have left on their pacemaker.”

Dr John Paisey, another consultant cardiologist at UHS NHS Foundation Trust, performed four out of five of the world’s first smart pacemaker procedures.

He said: “This is extremely exciting technology which enables us to co-ordinate everything from the implantation of a pacemaker and its initial programming through to ongoing realtime monitoring with a smartphone – all by lowenergy Bluetooth.”

In 2014, doctors at UHS implanted the world’s smallest pacemaker, the Micra Transcatheter Pacing System, which is one-tenth the size of traditional models. – Daily Mail