Mobile App With Bluetooth Wireless/Wearable Medical Device Sensors for Heart Rate Monitoring

Introduction

Information advancements have made it possible to get information about our bodies that can be used to help us live healthier. Technology such as wearable devices gives us information like heart rate at our fingertips. Our heart rate can provide important information such as workouts, recovery, and general health that medical practitioners can use to offer advice and recommendations to help us live healthier. According to Dr. Travers, maintaining a specific heart rate for a given period can help one to burn more calories and fat, improving cardiovascular health (Cleveland Clinic, 2021). This project investigates how people can use heart rate monitoring mobile apps with Bluetooth wireless/wearable medical device sensors to stay healthy.

This project focus on “staying healthy” as the area of care delivery. We shall especially be looking at how one can use Mobile App with Bluetooth wireless/wearable medical device sensors to monitor heart rate and how this information can be used to improve a person’s life health wise.

According to Lamboley (2022), the leading cause of death in the United States is a cardiovascular disease caused by inactivity, tobacco and alcohol abuse, and an unhealthy diet. Bayoumy et al. (2021) explain that using smart wearable devices for heart rate measurement during rest and exercise can predict the risk of cardiovascular disease. He explains that a healthy person’s high heart rate while resting may be a predictor of the risk of cardiovascular disease. In contrast, an impaired heart rate recovery after exercising may also indicate that the person is at risk of cardiovascular disease. Additionally, a varying heart rate may also be an indicator of cardiovascular disease.

How it works

Heart rate monitoring is mainly used by people seeking to burn calories and fats, especially by exercising. Monitoring heart rate and maintaining it at a level recommended by a medical practitioner enables one to burn the optimal calories and fats. Some benefits of monitoring heart rate include; It is a source of constant feedback on a person’s cardiovascular system, especially while doing physical activity, safe exercise so as not to work out for too long or to under-exercise, enhanced fitness level since the time that it takes for your heart to come down to normal after doing physical activity indicates how to fit one is, making quick adjustments to workouts and other physical activities since heart rate monitors provide information that can help one adjust their actions.

Before starting heart rate monitoring, it is essential to determine the heart rate zones. Heart rate zones refer to heartbeats per minute best suited to achieve the objective of heart rate monitoring. It is obtained by subtracting one’s age from 200 (Cleveland clinic, 2021). There are various types of heart rate monitors that people can use in the market, including;

Fitness trackers

Fitness trackers have become popular in the market as they help people to monitor fitness goals such as steps taken, distance run, calories burned, and heart rate;

Chest trap models

This model consists of a chest trap and wristwatch receiver. This model is more accurate than strapless models and offers continuous heart rate monitoring, but it is more expensive.

Wrist/forearm wearables

They are worn on the wrist, as the name suggests, and are accurate while resting or walking. Inaccurate readings can be caused by activities that involve hand exercise.

Smart rings

These are pretty new in the market but have been proven to be very accurate while one is resting.

Pulse oximeters

They are mainly used in hospitals to take heart rate readings from patients and are very accurate.

Challenges

The challenges faced by both medics and patients in using Mobile App with Bluetooth wireless/wearable medical device sensors for heart rate monitoring include;

• Lack of knowledge on the use of wearable devices among the users. Issues such as static from wearing the device over clothing or slippages from not wearing the chest strap correctly have been reported to interfere with the data being transmitted from the patient to the doctors.
• Another concern is connectivity where patients are in areas where there is poor internet or patients do not have the internet at all to transmit the data collected to the doctors for monitoring (Harvey and Seiler, 2022)
• Inadequate devices also pose a challenge to using such devices in heart rate monitoring. There are more patients that require the heart rate monitoring devices than there are device (Harvey and Seiler, 2022)
• The challenges faced by both medics and patients in using Mobile App with Bluetooth wireless/wearable medical device sensors for heart rate monitoring include;
• Lack of knowledge on the use of wearable devices among the users. Issues such static from wearing device over clothing or slippages from not wearing the chest strap correctly have been reported to interfere with the data being transmitted from the patient to the doctors
• Another concern is connectivity where patients are in areas where there is poor internet or patients do not have internet at all to transmit the data collected to the doctors for monitoring (Harvey and Seiler, 2022)
• Inadequate devices also pause a challenge to the use of such devices in heart rate monitoring. There are more patients that require the heart rate monitoring devices than there are device (Harvey and Seiler, 2022)

Opportunities

The use of wearable devices for heart rate monitoring to help people to live better lives can be made more ideal if the following opportunities are explored.

• Work-fitness programs – Human resource managers should introduce mandatory fitness programs for the employees. They could provide wearable devices such as smartwatches to monitor the heart rate of their employees along with other measures such as mandatory steps per day to ensure that they are healthy. This will reduce the number of sick days as well as ensure the employees are fit therefore leading to higher productivity.
• Improved technology – Innovators should come up with better technology that measures heart rate more preciously so that doctors can be able to offer insight to the patients more precisely. The technology should overcome challenges such as charges associated with putting on the devices on top of clothes or the issue of slippages associated with loose connections between the body contact and the device.

Summary

Our bodies give us vital information that can be used to translate how fit we are. One of those information is the heart rate. Our heartrate can give us important information such as workout, recovery and general health that medical practitioners can use to offer advice and recommendations that can help us live healthier. Heart rate can also be used to determine how much at risk one is to getting the cardiovascular disease. Heart rate zones are the ranges of where the heartbeat of an individual should range if they are healthy. Some challenges of using heart rate monitoring include lack of knowledge of how to use the devices by patients, understaffed medics to handle the data, inadequate devices, poor connectivity and few clinics involved. Some of the opportunities associated with heart rate monitoring include the advancement of technology to measure heart rate more precisely and incorporation of fitness programs in work.

Recommendation

We recommend the following actions to be taken in order to make use of heart rate monitoring more efficient in helping people

• Investment in better technology that will enable the users to take more precise and accurate readings while overcoming challenges static charge and or slippages from not wearing the chest strap correctly
• Education of doctors and other health practitioners on how to interpret and handle the data from the wearable devices so that they can be able to assists patients better
• Hospitals should also increase the number of staff to handle the large volumes of data from the wearable devices.
• More hospitals should allow integration of data from the wearable devices into their electronic medical records to help in assisting more people

References

Cleveland Clinic. (2021, January 15). Why to Wear a Heart Rate Monitor to the Gym. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/serious-about-your-workouts-get-a-heart-rate-monitor/

Bayoumy, K., Gaber, M., Elshafeey, A., Mhaimeed, O., Dineen, E. H., Marvel, F. A. & Elshazly, M. B. (2021). Smart wearable devices in cardiovascular care: where we are and how to move forward. Nature Reviews Cardiology, 18(8), 581-599

Lamboley, L. (2022). Improve Preventive Care With a Better Cardiovascular Risk Assessment. Prevounce Blog | Chronic Care Management and Medicare Preventive Services. https://blog.prevounce.com/improve-preventive-care-with-a-better-cardiovascular-risk-assessment?_gl=1*pg1sr4*_ga*MTQwNzUxODgzOC4xNjY1MDc0MzQ1*_ga_ZMCB725XC7*MTY2NTA3NDM0NS4xLjEuMTY2NTA3NDQ2Ny40NC4wLjA

Harvey, M., & Seiler, A. (2022). Challenges in managing a remote monitoring device clinic. Heart Rhythm O2, 3(1), 3-7.