Off-the-Shelf Wearable Trackers Provide Clinically-Useful Information for Patients with Heart Disease

Monitoring of heart rate and physical activity using consumer wearable devices was found to have clinical value for comparing the response to two treatments for atrial fibrillation and heart failure.

The study published in Nature Medicine examined if a commercially-available fitness tracker and smartphone could continuously monitor the response to medications, and provide clinical information similar to in-person hospital assessment.

The wearable devices, consisting of a wrist band and connected smartphone, collected a vast amount of data on the response to two different medications prescribed as part of a clinical trial called RATE-AF, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).

Led by researchers from the cardAIc group at the University of Birmingham, the team used artificial intelligence to help analyse over 140 million datapoints for heart rate in 53 individuals over 20 weeks. They found that digoxin and beta-blockers had a similar effect on heart rate, even after accounting for differences in physical activity. This was in contrast to previous studies that had only assessed the short-term impact of digoxin.

A neural network that took account of missing information was developed to avoid an over-optimistic view of the wearable data stream. Using this approach, the team found that the wearables were equivalent to standard tests often used in hospitals and clinical trials that require staff time and resources. The average age of participants in the study was 76 years, highlighting possible future value regardless of age or experience with technology.

Professor Dipak Kotecha from the Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences at the University of Birmingham and the lead author of the study said:

"People across the world are increasingly using wearable devices in their daily lives to help monitor their activity and health status. This study shows the potential to use this new technology to assess the response to treatment and make a positive contribution to the routine care of patients."

"Heart conditions such as atrial fibrillation and heart failure are expected to double in prevalence over the next few decades, leading to a large burden on patients as well as substantial healthcare cost. This study is an exciting showcase for how artificial intelligence can support new ways to help treat patients better."

The study was funded as part of the BigData@Heart consortium from the European Union’s Innovative Medicines Initiative. The RATE-AF trial was funded by the UK National Institute for Health and Care Research.

Gill SK, Barsky A, Guan X, Bunting KV, Karwath A, Tica O, Stanbury M, Haynes S, Folarin A, Dobson R, Kurps J, Asselbergs FW, Grobbee DE, Camm AJ, Eijkemans MJC, Gkoutos GV, Kotecha D; BigData@Heart Consortium; cardAIc group; RATE-AF trial team.
Consumer wearable devices for evaluation of heart rate control using digoxin versus beta-blockers: the RATE-AF randomized trial.
Nat Med. 2024 Jul;30(7):2030-2036. doi: 10.1038/s41591-024-03094-4

Most Popular Now

Unlocking the 10 Year Health Plan

The government's plan for the NHS is a huge document. Jane Stephenson, chief executive of SPARK TSL, argues the key to unlocking its digital ambitions is to consider what it...

Alcidion Grows Top Talent in the UK, wit…

Alcidion has today announced the addition of three new appointments to their UK-based team, with one internal promotion and two external recruits. Dr Paul Deffley has been announced as the...

AI can Find Cancer Pathologists Miss

Men assessed as healthy after a pathologist analyses their tissue sample may still have an early form of prostate cancer. Using AI, researchers at Uppsala University have been able to...

New Training Year Starts at Siemens Heal…

In September, 197 school graduates will start their vocational training or dual studies in Germany at Siemens Healthineers. 117 apprentices and 80 dual students will begin their careers at Siemens...

AI, Full Automation could Expand Artific…

Automated insulin delivery (AID) systems such as the UVA Health-developed artificial pancreas could help more type 1 diabetes patients if the devices become fully automated, according to a new review...

How AI could Speed the Development of RN…

Using artificial intelligence (AI), MIT researchers have come up with a new way to design nanoparticles that can more efficiently deliver RNA vaccines and other types of RNA therapies. After training...

MIT Researchers Use Generative AI to Des…

With help from artificial intelligence, MIT researchers have designed novel antibiotics that can combat two hard-to-treat infections: drug-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae and multi-drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Using generative AI algorithms, the research...

AI Hybrid Strategy Improves Mammogram In…

A hybrid reading strategy for screening mammography, developed by Dutch researchers and deployed retrospectively to more than 40,000 exams, reduced radiologist workload by 38% without changing recall or cancer detection...

Penn Developed AI Tools and Datasets Hel…

Doctors treating kidney disease have long depended on trial-and-error to find the best therapies for individual patients. Now, new artificial intelligence (AI) tools developed by researchers in the Perelman School...

Are You Eligible for a Clinical Trial? C…

A new study in the academic journal Machine Learning: Health discovers that ChatGPT can accelerate patient screening for clinical trials, showing promise in reducing delays and improving trial success rates. Researchers...

Global Study Reveals How Patients View M…

How physicians feel about artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine has been studied many times. But what do patients think? A team led by researchers at the Technical University of Munich...

New AI Tool Addresses Accuracy and Fairn…

A team of researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has developed a new method to identify and reduce biases in datasets used to train machine-learning algorithms...