Why the study?
Rapid growth in consumer wearable technology capturing heart rate and ECG data has prompted investigation into its clinical utility, benefits, and limitations in cardiac care.
Consumer wearable technologies offer promising opportunities for early detection of arrhythmias like atrial fibrillation, though device inaccuracy and false positives remain significant challenges for clinical integration.
Wearables may aid cardiac diagnosis and management; leaves open validation of accuracy and outcomes in prospective trials.
In recent years the consumer wearable technology market has experienced remarkable growth, offering consumers an increasing variety of health-related metrics, which include heart rate and electrocardiogram (ECG) data. This development has prompted significant investigation into the role of these devices in cardiac care, revealing numerous advantages and possibilities for innovation. Specifically, wearables have demonstrated value in diagnosing cardiac conditions, assisting with personalized disease management, improving health outcomes, and providing continual monitoring. Current limitations are related to issues such as inaccessibility and device inaccuracy, both of which are significant concerns, due to their impacts on patient well-being and appropriate health resource utilization. Despite these issues, wearables remain an incredibly promising frontier in cardiac care, capable of driving innovation in multiple aspects of cardiovascular practice. This article aims to provide an overview of the current technology available, its demonstrated benefits and limitations, and its future advancement opportunities.
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Sigfstead et al. (2023) studied this question.
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