If your Smartphone becomes a mini-laboratory, capable of recording your cardiac parameters, then why send them to a laboratory? Such a device has been developed by a young Australian PhD student from the University of Sydney.
Doctors have long known: the heart rate of an individual and its variations contain extensive information on his condition. For example, it was found that a high resting heart rate could be a good cardiovascular risk predictor.
Furthermore, beyond the cardiovascular risks, changes in heart rate are also good indicators of the level of stress and emotional state of individuals.
Finally, the monitoring of changes in heart rate is to assess the state of fatigue and the risk of overtraining.
Problem: at present, to follow the fluctuations in the heart rate of a patient, the most common method is to bring the person in an analysis center, where the heart rate is measured in different configurations ( at rest, after exercise, etc.). Or, in other words, a heavy process, which, moreover, does not allow to monitor changes in heart rate in real-time patient.
To resolve this issue, James Heathers, a young PhD in Psychophysiology at the University of Sydney had the idea to design a particularly ingenious mobile device: This device consists of a sensor attached to the patient’s finger, which is connected to the smartphone, on which a dedicated application has been downloaded previously.
The smartphone processes the data provided by the sensor and sends them to the laboratory. Result? It is possible to follow in real time the changes in the heart rate of patients. Moreover, this device allows simultaneous data from a large number of patients that laboratory analysis obviously does not allow.
The device, which would probably inspire actors in the medical sector, was presented at the annual conference of the Australasian Society for Psychophysiology, which took place from 28 to 30 November 2012 at the University New South Wales (Sydney, Australia).
