Close to their hearts and yet far-reaching
A Maidenhead woman has helped to shape a new study to improve heart research after her husband was alerted to a potentially life-threatening heart condition by his smartwatch.
Nicola Monk, 34, helped scientists at the British Heart Foundation Data Science Centre carry out a new study to understand how data from smartphone and wearable items such as fitness watches could be used to boost cardiovascular health.
This comes after her husband Chris was alerted to a heart condition by his Garmin watch.
Competing regularly in triathlon and Ironman events, Chris could often be found out running after work.
However, in November 2019, following a standard 10k run while out in Australia on a work trip, the 38-year-old’s Garmin watch showed that his heart was not slowing down as normal.
Nicola said: “There had been times before where his heart rate hadn’t slowed down at a normal rate, but he’d just chalked it up to work stress or everyday anxiety. This time was different so he took himself to hospital, and showed them his fitness watch.”
Chris was admitted to hospital immediately and kept overnight, where he was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation.
The condition causes the heart to beat abnormally and, if left untreated, it can raise the risk of stroke, heart failure and other heart-related issues.
“It’s all thanks to his smartwatch that Chris was diagnosed,” Nicola added.
“It would’ve been so easy to dismiss if we hadn’t had that data.”
Motivated by her husband’s experience, Nicola who works for the NHS, joined the Smartphones and Wearables Patient Advisory Group at the British Heart Foundation Data Science Centre, led by Health Data Research UK.
Alongside seven members of the public, representing different backgrounds,
Nicola helped to design a study which was published last week.
Dr Jackie MacArthur, senior scientific programme manager, at the BHF Data Science Centre, said: “Smartphones and wearables, such as fitness watches or clip-on heart monitors, collect data that is highly relevant to health research, such as heart rate and measures of activity, such as steps per day.”
“If this could be securely linked with a person’s NHS data, with their informed consent, this data could provide new insights into the causes and effects of cardiovascular diseases, and improve disease prediction, diagnosis and treatment.”
The centre carried out a survey asking healthcare professionals and researchers to identify which types of data from smartphones and wearables would be important to their work. Another survey asked the public how they would feel about sharing this data and more than 75 per cent said they would be in favour of sharing the data.
The data identified as most important for cardiovascular research includes heart rhythm, heart rate, activity and sleep. This information will now act as a starting point for creating a dataset for cardiovascular research.
The centre is now setting out to address the infrastructure, funding and technical challenges involved in making this vison a reality.
Chris remains in good health and uses his Garmin watch to track his heart rate.
“I’ve seen first-hand the benefit of using smartphone and wearables data in my family, so it’s exciting to think about what we could achieve if that could be securely linked with NHS data,” Nicola dded.
“It’s a great way of volunteering my time for something different, but which is still connected to furthering positive outcomes for patients,”