Heart Sentinel Tests Movesense Sensors Successfully with their Arrhythmia Detection Algorithm
Heart Sentinel is an Italian health tech start-up that develops algorithms for the prevention of cardiac problems. The Parma-based company has been testing their arrhythmia detection algorithms with Movesense sensors and recently published the results of a study that demonstrates the usefulness of running arrhythmia algorithms locally on the sensor.
The report with the title “Commercially available heart rate monitor repurposed into a 9-gram standalone device for automatic arrhythmia detection with snapshot electrocardiographic capability: a pilot validation” is currently published as a pre-print and submitted for peer review.
In the research setup, the team lead by Dr. Nicola Gaibazzi, Director of non-invasive cardiology in Parma University Hospital, programmed Movesense HR+ to run Heart Sentinel’s proprietary RITMIA algorithm in real time. The algorithm uses R-R intervals to classify the heart rhythm as normal, atrial fibrillation (AF), or non-AF type of arrhythmia.
The team measured simulated ECG signal with Movesense HR+. The arrhythmias in the signal included two different premature ventricular complexes, ventricular tachycardia, missing beats, and two asystoles of different lengths.
When the algorithm detected any type of arrhythmia, it triggered the sensor to record a short retrospective single-channel ECG strip to its internal memory for later consultation. When the heart rhythm was labelled as a normal sinus rhythm, no ECG was recorded.
The solution worked as expected, and all simulated abnormalities effectively triggered an ECG recording that was clearly diagnostic for the type of simulated arrhythmia.
The key conclusion of the study is that, running an embedded arrhythmia detection algorithm on Movesense makes it probably the smallest and lightest device capable to detect arrhythmias and record them in the single-lead ECG tracing format. This setup overcomes the key limitations of cost, ease of use, and patient compliance that most other solutions for long-term arrhythmia detection currently have.
Looking for research partners
The next step of validating the system for actual use is to conduct a human study with the same device setup. Dr. Gaibazzi’s team is looking for research partners outside Italy for running the study in practice. If you are interested in cooperating with the topic, please contact Dr. Gaibazzi directly by email.
To read the full pre-print report, click the link in the beginning of the article.
More information about the company: Heart Sentinel website.
Learn more about the Movesense sensor used in the project
