New fitness trackers can warn of heart disease risk
Latest generation of apps, wearables could save many lives
A new generation of apps and wearables is emerging with the ability to monitor vital signs crucial to spotting heart problems, giving us and our doctors powerful new weapons to fight stroke and heart disease.
Last week, Apple revealed it would be testing, along with Stanford Medicine, an Apple Watch app to help spot irregular heart rhythms that could lead to serious illness. And the same day, Silicon Valley start-up AliveCor announced it received FDA clearance for a connected wristband for the Apple Watch. Together, AliveCor’s hardware and software monitor for irregularities, and they produce medical-grade results for physicians to evaluate.
Efforts such as these and others could save lots of lives. And, in this time of spiraling health care costs, they could also save money. Heart disease is the No. 1 killer of Americans, outnumbering all forms of cancer combined, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Together with strokes, they account for nearly three of every 10 deaths in the country. And as the nation ages, that ratio likely will increase.
These new devices aren’t your every- day fitness trackers, which many doctors dismiss as inaccurate. These are clinically accurate: Most either are going through the FDA approval process or, like AliveCor’s SmartRhythm software and companion KardiaBand, already have clearance.
And second, they’re familiar: The devices crank out the same data physicians already record when you visit their offices.
The benefit these devices have over systems in the doctor’s office is they can record data every day — around the clock, in some cases. That affords more insight than readings logged at the doctor’s office once or twice a year.
What’s making this union of wearables and health care possible? It’s a mix of some old tech, and some new. Some borrowed, and some ... well, red.
Red: Yes, red. Both red and infrared,
to be exact. As opposed to flashing green LEDs on the underside of the Apple Watch, the new Fitbit Ionic and most other heart-rate-monitoring wearables today, these medically-oriented fitness trackers use red light. The LEDS flash the light into the skin, while companion sensors use changes in light reflecting back to calculate pulse rate and other metrics. Like green, red has its own set of benefits and shortcomings. But its key advantage is it penetrates much deeper into the body than green, so it can be used to derive a much richer set of vitals.
Senso-Gram is using red and infrared light to build a compact, wireless vital-signs monitor that perches on your finger. The Plano, Texas, start-up turned heads at the Connected Health Conference in Boston in late October with its new Senso-Scan, which measures blood pressure continually as well as heart rate, oxygenation and respiration.
The Senso-Scan looks like the pulse oximeter they clip to your finger at the doctor’s office, only without the cable and cart attached. It’s now under review by the FDA.
I’ve been evaluating Senso-Scan for more than a month now. There are a few kinks to be worked out in the software and user interface, as with any new product. But it works. I got sick at the digital health show, of all places, and brought the Senso-Scan with me when I went to the doctor. We compared it to the office’s equipment as well as to the gold standard: the oldschool kind that measures with a stethoscope. It passed.
Senso-Gram is building a follow-up product that shrinks the same vitals into a ring. That’s scheduled to roll out midyear, though blood pressure may not be available at introduction.
Borrowed: Like start-up Senso-gram, Omron — a household name in blood pressure measurement — is also navigating a new line of wearable blood pressure monitors through the FDA approval process. But Omron is taking a different approach. Omron borrowed the tried-and-true pressure cuff and miniaturized it to fit on your wrist like a smartwatch. You should be able to buy Omron’s Project Zero 2.0 blood-pressure watch late next year, FDA willing.
New: Start-ups such as Alive-Cor are focusing on detecting irregular heartbeats, or arrhythmia, such as atrial fibrillation, which can lead to stroke. Alive-Cor’s Kardia-Band features an embedded electrocardiogram, or ECG, which is what doctors use to monitor heart activity. Kardia’s Smart-Rhythm software leans on the Apple Watch’s heart monitor as a first line of defense. If the app sees something suspicious, it sends an alert, telling you to record an ECG rhythm for the doc.
I’ve been testing the Kardia-Band for more than a week, and guess what? I got an alert. My pesky cold may also have helped me put the Kardia-Band through its paces. The day after Thanksgiving, the Kardia app blinked and beeped, with a message to record an ECG, like right away. The resulting test called out possible atrial fibrillation.
If you have physicians as relatives, then you know how they hate being asked to examine you during the holidays. So you can appreciate why I held off asking my uncle, a retired cardiologist, to check out the rhythm strip printout.
Of course, I eventually did ask him. He looked at the file and said the underlying sinus rhythm looked normal. He said the symptoms likely were the result of all the cold medication I’d been swilling to chase away my bug. But go see my cardiologist anyway, he said. Which, I will. Old: Another start-up, Cardiac-Sense, is also tackling heart arrhythmia with its own wrist-worn device. The Israeli company says it has found a way to produce heart data from the green LEDs and optical sensors on today’s smartwatches that’s as accurate as an oldschool ECG. The company is now presenting clinical trial data to the FDA.
The Cardiac-Sense watch includes built-in ECG for reporting to physicians, and like the Kardia-Band, the Cardiac-Sense device alerts you to record an ECG rhythm at the first sign of trouble.
Mike Feibus is principal analyst at Feibus-Tech, a Scottsdale, Ariz., market strategy and analysis firm focusing on mobile and IOT ecosystems for health care and other industries. Reach him at mikef@feibustech.com. Follow him on Twitter @MikeFeibus.