SmartWATCHes for Detection of Atrial Fibrillation

Introduction

Particularly in stroke prevention, the detection of atrial fibrillation is of pivotal importance. Recent studies have impressively confirmed the merits of long-term monitoring. Nevertheless, and despite very mature technology, the currently available methods like long-term ECG with conductive adhesive electrodes or implantable loop recorders are burdened with disadvantages in that they are inconvenient, costly and/or invasive. A predecessor study gave us the possibility to test an app that employs photoplethysmographic signals on a smartphone camera-similar to pulse oximetry technology-to distinguish between atrial fibrillation and sinus rhythm. That retrospective study achieved a sensitivity and specificity of 95% (Krivoshei et al., Europace 2016). The prospective follow-up study DETECT AF pro is currently being conducted in cooperation with Prof. Dörr in Greifswald, Germany.

Our research group has been involved with testing the app's quality in clinical settings before implementing it for use. This procedure differs markedly from the otherwise common practice of marketing qualitatively inferior "health apps" without any clinical testing. There is no app equipped with comparable technology worldwide. The WATCH AF study is the first study on sophisticated rhythm analysis using a smartwatch worldwide.

Study design

Prospective, blinded, multicenter study.