Is it time for a consumerized or home-based 12-lead electrocardiogram?

This editorial refers to ‘Using a smartwatch ECG to detect abnormalities associated with sudden cardiac arrest in young adults’, by Nasarre M. et al., pp. 406–412. The electrocardiogram (ECG) has been directly accessible outside of medical care via consumer technology for almost a decade. However, watch-based ECGs are actually not so new; the first ECG watches were commercialized in the mid-1990s for use by clinicians as ambulatory event-recording devices.1 Nevertheless, it took over 20 years for the wrist-worn ECG devices to gain traction, this time as consumer-facing technology. The main catalysts for scale include lower-cost hardware, cellular transmission and cloud storage, artificial intelligence, and a renewed regulatory environment supportive of consumer-facing devices. Smartphone ECGs and smartphone-connected ECGs are available from a wide range of manufacturers and across multiple technology platforms. Some of these technologies even have FDA clearance for automated or AI-based pre-diagnosis of atrial fibrillation, but generally...