Cardiac Monitoring with Smartphones: MobileECG Usage in ICD Patients

Abstract

Background: Addressing behavioral risk factors and having access to high quality medical care with increased information, biometrics, and treatment planning could reduce global cardiovascular mortality. There has been a surge of medical technologies that can help prevent, manage, and even forecast medically distressing cardiovascular events. As a new wave of medical technologies are developed, patients will increasingly be considered “key personnel” in the process of using novel techniques to improve self-care, engagement and overall quality of life. The purpose of this study was to examine the perceived added value of smartphone-ECG technology to an ICD patient user experience.

Methods: Fifty-one participants were recruited from an existing ICD patient population at the East Carolina Heart Institute in Greenville, North Carolina. Participants were given smartphone-ECG devices and asked to take a thirty-second reading at least once per day. In addition to overall technology satisfaction, three major constructs were examined in this population including cardiac and device-specific anxiety, quality of life, and self-management. Time points of data collection were at baseline, thirty-day, and ninety-day.

Results: The current study findings indicate that smartphone-ECG technology is widely accepted and positively appraised by this user base. Positive technology appraisal did not correlate to significant within-group changes in domains of quality of life and self-management after using the technology for thirty days. ICD shock anxiety was significantly increased during the period of technology usage, which may have been maintained by the task of using a device that required them to focus on their disease state at least once per day. Conversely, overall ICD device acceptance increased significantly indicating that the external technology use of the mECG device may have led to positive appraisals of their implantable devices.

Discussion: The results of the current study further the knowledge of the mobile-health field by asking a series of simple, yet important, questions related to device acceptance and technology satisfaction. Medical technology development will most likely continue to outpace the speed at which clinicians and researchers are able to critically evaluate and integrate novel technology into their patient care centers. QoL, shock-related anxiety, and more general cardiac anxiety remain important treatment targets among ICD patient populations.