Present state of knowledge

Millions of people suffer from health problems in the US alone. Heart disease kills so many every year and it can be almost impossible to know what is going on in your chest 24/7. Mobile devices available to the modern public can take your heart rate when prompted but cannot track, monitor and record your heart rate 24/7. Many engineers, medical Professionals and others have been working on ways to help people not only monitor their health easier but to efficiently track any issues you many have with your health. The more our technology grows in the medical field the more lives are saved every year. Just having a way for normal people to track and monitor their heart rate better will make people more aware of any health issues they may have, help them monitor for issues that may arise in the future and even make people feel less anxious about their health on a daily basis knowing it is being monitored. Using a technology that can work to track the persons heart rate every minute and record any abnormalities is a game changer. The technology could even alert the user if there is a serious change in their heart rate that could prove to be dangerous to the individual’s health. Simple components and programming could work together to help save lives and help millions track their health more efficiently.

Your heart is one of the most important organs inside your body, and from its performance, can tell your level of health. The initial focus on the pulse, which is one of the four vital signs with a significant indictor of the performance of the heart (Chirakanphaisarn, Thongkanluang, Chiwpreechar, 2016). Pulse is the rhythm of the heart (Chirakanphaisarn, Thongkanluang, Chiwpreechar, 2016). Understanding the best places to monitor the pulse is very important, to help understand these key points, below is a diagram.

A person’s heart rate can depend on many factors; sex, age, levels of exercise, etc. There is a measurement system that takes account of all the factors and has created a table that is accurate on the bpm (beats per minute) for different age groups. The table below is an accurate description of the normal heart rate ranges for these different age groups.

Age span Heart rate (bpm)

Less than 1 month 120–160

1–12 months 80–140

12 months – 2 years 80–130

2–6 years 75–120

6–12 years 75–110

More than 12 years 60–100

Using this table, you can easily detect abnormalities in a person’s heart rate. Abnormal pulse rate environment by Tachycardia: a condition in which the heart rate in adults more than 100 bpm, Bradycardia: a condition in which the heart rate in adults less than 60 bpm (Chirakanphaisarn, Thongkanluang, Chiwpreechar, 2016).

As of now, the only devices an average person has to track their heart rates are fitness trackers. Fitness trackers are devices or applications for monitoring and tracking fitness-related metrics such as distance walked or run, calorie consumption, quality of sleep and heart rate (Benedetto, 2018). Though these fitness trackers are very helpful in monitoring your heart rate during exercise, they cannot function to constantly track your heart rate and check for abnormalities. Even if the reliability of wrist-worn trackers in clinical settings is still under debate, their adoption in human physiology research has been unanimously accepted in the last 2 years (Benedetto, 2018). Meaning that people are feeling better about being able to self-monitor their heart rates and better track their health. Finally, interventional studies support the value of wearable activity trackers as motivational tool for specific patients (e.g. for weight management in childhood obesity, diabetes, cystic fibrosis in adolescents, recovering alcoholics, peripheral artery disease, and knee osteoarthritis) and thus as a key factor for disease prevention and management (Benedetto, 2018).

Chirakanphaisarn, Thongkanluang & Chiwpreechar (2016, Sept 1), did a study on Heart rate measurement and electrical pulse signal analysis for subjects 20-80 years old. In this study they created a device like the design I plan on doing for the Mobile Heart Assistant. The study used pulse sensors designed for your finger tips that took the subject’s heart rate and stored the information onto an SD card so the team could later review the information.

Below is the device the team created. The device is powered from one 9 volt battery and uses various interfaces and software algorithms. The prototype can measure your heart rate and record the information to an SD card.

The new apple watch series 4, is a device that cardiologist call a “game changer”. This device uses an app through an ECG reading that allows the wearer to see their heart rate pattern and to see if there are any abnormalities. With the app, users can receive a heart rhythm classification within 30 seconds, notifying users whether the heart is beating in a normal pattern or whether there are signs of atrial fibrillation, according to a press release issued by Apple (Singh, 2018). The apple watch series 4 can monitor your heart rate on command and save the results to be reviewed by your doctor on request. This device is very good and helpful in tracking your heart rate. The FDA cleared the new ECG app as a class II medical device, through a de novo classification. In a letter to Apple, the FDA noted that the ECG app is “intended for use with the Apple Watch to create, store, transfer and display a single-channel ECG similar to a Lead I ECG (Singh, 2018). This is only an app on the apple watch series 4 and not its own device, the watch itself cost over $400, which is very expensive for most people.

Heart problems are very dangerous and can cost so many lives every year. About 610,000 people die of heart disease in the United States every year–that’s 1 in every 4 deaths (CDC, 2017). That is a lot of people, just in the US, there are so many more sufferings from heart problems across the world. Every year about 735,000 Americans have a heart attack. Of these, 525,000 are a first heart attack and 210,000 happen in people who have already had a heart attack (CDC, 2017). In a 2005 survey, most respondents – 92% - recognized chest pain as a symptom of a heart attack. Only 27% were aware of all major symptoms and knew to call 9-1-1 when someone was having a heart attack (CDC, 2017). About 47% of sudden cardiac deaths occur outside a hospital. This suggests that many people with heart disease don’t act on early warning signs. Being able to properly track and monitor your heart rate could save you early on from being at risk for heart disease or a heart attack.