BackCan your fitness tracker save your life?
The use of these devices has the potential to provide emergency physicians with objective clinical information prior to the patient's arrival at the emergency department
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Mumbai: Think of it as fitness fads or must-have devices, but health bands are here to stay, especially among fitness buffs.
But can a fitness band help doctors save your life in case of an emergency?
In a first, physicians used a patient’s personal activity tracker and smartphone to identify the time his irregular heartbeats started, which allowed them to treat his condition with electrical cardioversion and discharge him, according to a 5 April statement by the American College of Emergency Physicians.
Electrical cardioversion uses an electric current to bring the heart’s rhythm back to its regular pattern.
This case, which used information in an activity tracker/smartphone system to assist in medical decision-making, was reported online in the Annals of Emergency Medicine (‘Interrogation of Patient Activity Tracker to Assist Arrhythmia Management’) on 1 April.
“Using the patient’s activity tracker—in this case, a Fitbit—we were able to pinpoint exactly when the patient’s normal heart rate of 70 jumped up to 190," said author of the report, Dr Alfred Sacchetti, MD, FACEP of Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center in Camden, New Jersey, in a statement.
“The device told us that the patient’s atrial fibrillation was present for only a few hours. That was well within the 48-hour window needed to consider him for rhythm conversion, so we cardioverted him and sent him home," he added.
Atrial fibrillation is an abnormal heart rhythm, characterized by rapid and irregular beating.
The patient, who was 42 years old with a history of seizures but no history of cardiac disease or prior episodes of atrial fibrillation, was brought to the emergency room following a seizure. He had an irregular heart rate ranging between 130 and 190 beats per minute. He was medicated for the same (with oxcarbazepine and diltiazem), following which his heart rate returned to normal (between 80 and 100 beats per minute) but the abnormal heart rhythm remained.
The treatment requires a patient to reliably tell you when the irregular heartbeats occurred within the previous 48 hours. But in this case, the 42-year-old patient was asymptomatic (failed to show noticeable symptoms) so the emergency department staff accessed his smartphone application that connected with his activity tracker and discovered that the irregular heart rhythm started three hours prior to coming to the emergency department.
After the electrical cardioversion, the emergency department staff looked at the smartphone app again, which accurately recorded the change in heart rate consistent with a rhythm change from irregular to normal. The patient was discharged with instructions to follow up with outpatient cardiology.
“Not all activity trackers measure heart rates, but this is the function of most value to medical providers," said Dr Sacchetti. “Dizziness with a heart rate of 180 would be approached very differently from the same complaint with a heart rate of 30. At present, activity trackers are not considered approved medical devices and use of their information to make medical decisions is at the clinician’s own discretion. However, the increased use of these devices has the potential to provide emergency physicians with objective clinical information prior to the patient’s arrival at the emergency department."
Numbers clearly indicate that fitness bands are becoming highly popular in the wearables category. Most fitness bands now measure how much you sleep, how much you run, how fast your heart beats while the more expensive ones can also track other metrics such as your blood oxygen level, skin temperature, perspiration, body weight and body mass.
The sensors inside each device use slightly different algorithms to get this data, while the apps present the data in a user-friendly format on your bands or smartphones, whatever the case may be.
The forecasts for this market speak volumes for the usefulness of these fitness bands. According to research firm MarketsandMarkets, the global market for wearable technology is expected to reach $31.27 billion by 2020. It’s no wonder that major companies in the wearables market include technology and sports companies such as Apple Inc., Garmin Ltd, Google Inc., Jawbone Inc., LG Electronics Inc., Adidas AG, Nike Inc., Pebble Technology Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd, Sony Corp. and Xiaomi Technology Co. Ltd.
In India, however, the health-related wearable devices market is extremely nascent, with just a few Indian start-ups like GOQii, Ducere Technologies and RHL Vision Technologies operating in the segment. According to estimates by Convergence Catalyst, a Bengaluru-based research consulting firm, around 30,000-40,000 units of wearable products, including smartwatches and fitness bands, are sold every month in India. However, by the end of 2016, it is likely to touch nearly 500,000 for the entire year, up from around 150,000 in 2015.
Multi-national brands sold in India include the Moto 360 smartwatch, the Samsung Gear, the Apple Watch and Fitbit’s wearables. Popular among low-end devices are Misfit (from Misfit Wearables), Xiaomi and GOQii fitness bands. Globally, in 2015, FitBit remained the most popular brand of fitness trackers and smartwatches, shipping an estimated 21 million devices versus 12 million fitness trackers for Xiaomi and 11.6 million smartwatches for Apple, according to research firm International Data Corp.
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