Mobile Self-monitoring ECG Devices to Diagnose Arrhythmia (AR) that coincide with Palpitations: A Scoping Review (Preprint)

BACKGROUND The use and deployment of mobile devices across society is phenomenal. Yet, little is known about the use and deployment of mobile ECG monitoring of palpitations and arrhythmia. The popularity of the devices tied with the increase of individuals monitoring their health highlighted the paucity of material on this recent trend. OBJECTIVE In this scoping literature review we identify the contemporary evidence which reports the use of mobile ECG monitoring to assess palpitations and AR across populations. METHODS The search was conducted across five electronic databases: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), CINHAL, Google Scholar, PubMed, and Scopus, between February and March 2018. RESULTS A total of 981 records were identified and following the inclusion and exclusion criteria a total of nine records formed the final stage of the review. The results identified a total of six primary themes (purpose, environment, population, wearable devices, assessment, and study design). A further 24 secondary themes were identified including: detection, cost effectiveness, recruitment, type of setting, type of assessment, commercial or purpose-built mobile device across the primary themes. CONCLUSIONS This review highlights that further work is required to understand the impact of mobile ECG devices on how arrhythmias and palpitations are assessed and measured across all populations and l ages of society. A positive trend revealed by this review demonstrates how mobile ECG devices can support primary care providers to deliver high-levels of care, at a low cost to the service provider. This has several benefits: alleviation of patient anxiety, lowering the risk of morbidity and mortality, while progressively impacting on national and international care pathway guidelines. Limitations of this work contain the paucity of knowledge and insight from primary care providers and the lack of qualitative material. We argue that future studies consider qualitative and mixed-methods approaches studies to complement quantitative methodologies and to ensure all actors’ experiences are recorded.