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#Mhealth Study to Test Cardiac Effects of Potential COVID-19 Treatment – SPONSOR: CardioComm Solutions $EKG.ca – $ATE.ca $TLT.ca $OGI.ca $ACST.ca $IPA.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 9:35 AM on Friday, April 24th, 2020

SPONSOR: CardioComm Solutions (EKG: TSX-V) – The heartbeat of cardiovascular medicine and telemedicine. Patented systems enable medical professionals, patients, and other healthcare professionals, clinics, hospitals and call centres to access and manage patient information in a secure and reliable environment.

mHealth Study to Test Cardiac Effects of Potential COVID-19 Treatment

A French study will use a smartwatch and mHealth platform to monitor ECG data from COVID-19 patients being treated with hydroxychloroquine, a potential therapy for the Coronavirus but one that may have serious side effects.

  • An mHealth study being launched in France will use an mHealth wearable to monitor cardiac activity in COVID-19 patients being treated with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, a drug therapy eyes as a potential treatment for the Coronavirus.

Source: ThinkStock

By Eric Wicklund

April 22, 2020 – An mHealth study being launched in France will use an mHealth wearable to monitor cardiac activity in COVID-19 patients being treated with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, a drug therapy eyes as a potential treatment for the Coronavirus.

Researchers at the University Hospital of Marseille will be using a smartwatch develop by Withings and integrated with an AI-based mHealth platform developed by Boston-and-Paris-based Cardiologs. The platform is designed to remotely monitor a user’s ECG data for QT prolongation.

“A significant QT prolongation can lead to ventricular arrhythmia and potentially deadly consequences” Laurent Fiorina, a cardiologist at the Institut Cardiovasculaire Paris Sud (ICPS) and Cardiologs executive who helped launch the study, said in a press release. “It is thus important to closely monitor the QT interval during this treatment.”

“The objective of our study is to evaluate a new method for QT measurement using Cardiologs’ AI-based solution and ECG data collected via smartwatches,” added Professor Jean-Claude Deharo, head of the cardiac arrhythmia department at the University Hospital of Marseille and the principal investigator of the study. “Smartwatches are already used in the clinical setting but do not have validated QT analysis available. Combining these technologies will enable clinicians to overcome the practical limitations in the context of COVID-19 of the standard cardiac safety strategy that requires heavy patient interaction.”

Often used to prevent or treat malaria caused by mosquito bites, hydroxychloroquine has be held up by several people – including President Donald Trump – as a potential means of treating the Coronavirus. But many in the healthcare industry have pointed out the drug’s potentially dangerous side effect.

Researchers are hoping to determine whether the treatment does pose a threat to a patient’s health – and whether this platform can be used in other non-COVID-19 treatments.

“This study has implications for risk management of drug-induced cardiotoxicity, even beyond the current COVID-19 and hydroxychloroquine context,” Professor Jag Singh, a cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and scientific advisor to Cardiologs, said in the press release. “Personal ECG sensors could potentially find a role in the management of these patients, but also add value in other routine clinical care, since over 300 commonly used drugs may have similar QT-prolongation risks as hydroxychloroquine.”

Source: https://mhealthintelligence.com/news/mhealth-study-to-test-cardiac-effects-of-potential-covid-19-treatment

#Mhealth Project to Crowdsource Consumer Data for #Coronavirus Research – SPONSOR: CardioComm Solutions $EKG.ca – $ATE.ca $TLT.ca $OGI.ca $ACST.ca $IPA.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 11:49 AM on Wednesday, April 1st, 2020

SPONSOR: CardioComm Solutions (EKG: TSX-V) – The heartbeat of cardiovascular medicine and telemedicine. Patented systems enable medical professionals, patients, and other healthcare professionals, clinics, hospitals and call centres to access and manage patient information in a secure and reliable environment.

mHealth Project to Crowdsource Consumer Data for Coronavirus Research

  • UCSF researchers are deploying an mHealth app to gather information on daily health habits
  • They’re hoping to gain insight on how behaviors might affect the course of the virus or outcomes in those who are infected

By Eric Wicklund

March 31, 2020 – mHealth researchers are using smartphones to crowdsource Coronavirus research.

The University of California at San Francisco has launched COVID-19 Citizen Science (CCS), a project aimed at gathering insights from people around the world on the virus. Participants are being asked to download an mHealth app, complete a survey about their daily health habits, complete a weekly follow-up survey and pass it on to friends.

“We are asking each participant to share the link to recruit at least five others,” Gregory Marcus, MD, MAS, a professor at UCSF’s Department of Medicine and the project’s co-leader, said in a press release. “We want to demonstrate that the number of people signing up for this scientific study and contributing their data can increase exponentially, faster than the disease itself.”

Participants will also be able to provide continuous GPS data and information from mHealth wearables, such as Fitbit activity bands and smartwatches.

(For more coronavirus updates, visit our resource page, updated twice daily by Xtelligent Healthcare Media.)

The program is one of several aimed at using connected health platforms to study the pandemic. Just down the highway in San Diego, the Scripps Research Translational Institute has launched a project aimed at measuring the value of mHealth wearables in detecting emerging viral outbreaks.

Another project launched out of UCSF, meanwhile, is using mHealth wearables to monitor frontline care workers who’ve been exposed to the virus.

Marcos is no stranger to telehealth projects. In 2013 he helped to launch the Health eHeart Study, which used online and mHealth tools to collect and analyze heart health data. That, in turn, led to the launch of a study in 2018 that combined mHealth wearables with AI to determine whether a cardiac monitoring platform could help detect early signs of diabetes.

Marcos says CCS aims to identify behaviors, influences and factors that might affect the course of the virus and outcomes after infection, and he feels the study could be the largest-ever prospective epidemiological study of infectious diseases.

“Social distancing keeps many protected,” he said, “but joining together to contribute data will help us beat this thing.”

Source: https://mhealthintelligence.com/news/mhealth-project-to-crowdsource-consumer-data-for-coronavirus-research

‘Smart’ devices help reduce adverse outcomes of common heart condition #Mhealth – SPONSOR: CardioComm Solutions $EKG.ca – $ATE.ca $TLT.ca $OGI.ca $ACST.ca $IPA.ca

Posted by AGORACOM-JC at 4:02 PM on Tuesday, March 31st, 2020

SPONSOR: CardioComm Solutions (EKG: TSX-V) – The heartbeat of cardiovascular medicine and telemedicine. Patented systems enable medical professionals, patients, and other healthcare professionals, clinics, hospitals and call centres to access and manage patient information in a secure and reliable environment.

‘Smart’ devices help reduce adverse outcomes of common heart condition

  • mHealth devices, such as fitness trackers, smart watches and mobile phones, may enable earlier AF detection, and improved AF management through the use of photoplethysmography (PPG) technology
  • AF is the most common heart rhythm disturbance, affecting around one million people in the UK. People with AF are at increased risk of having a stroke and dying, as well as heart failure and dementia

by University of Liverpool

A new study, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, highlights the feasible use of mobile health (mHealth) devices to help with the screening and detection of a common heart condition.

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a heart rhythm condition that causes an irregular and sometimes, abnormally fast heart rate. In AF, the heart’s upper chambers (atria) contract randomly and sometimes so fast that the heart muscle cannot relax properly between contractions. This reduces the heart’s efficiency and performance—but also leads to a higher risk of blood clots.

AF is the most common heart rhythm disturbance, affecting around one million people in the UK. People with AF are at increased risk of having a stroke and dying, as well as heart failure and dementia. Currently, low detection due to lack of visible symptoms and non-adherence are major problems in current management approaches for patients with suspected AF.

Photoplethysmography technology

mHealth devices, such as fitness trackers, smart watches and mobile phones, may enable earlier AF detection, and improved AF management through the use of photoplethysmography (PPG) technology.

PPG is a simple and low-cost optical technique that can be used to detect blood volume changes in the microvascular bed of tissue. It is often used non-invasively to make measurements at the skin surface.

To help determine whether a mHealth technology-supported AF integrated management strategy would reduce AF-related adverse events, compared to usual care, an international team of researchers, led by Associate Professor Guo from Chinese PLA General Hospital in Beijing, and Professor Gregory Lip, Lead for the Liverpool Centre for Cardiovascular Science (LCCC)/Price-Evans Chair of Cardiovascular Medicine at University of Liverpool, conducted a randomised trial.

Central to the study was mobile health technologies developed by leading global technology companies, with a focus on using wearable smart devices such as those from Huawei, working in conjunction with a specially developed mobile app. These pieces of equipment and software can monitor a person’s vital signs with great detail and, most importantly for this study, 24 hours a day.

The specially designed mobile app not only charted the patient’s biometrics, it afforded clinicians the ability to offer integrated care throughout the duration of the trial. Doctors were able to periodically assess the patient’s updated statistics and contact them through the app to offer advice via the ABC care pathway. The ABC pathway, developed in part by the LCCS’ Professor Gregory Lip, is a set of guidance for patients and clinicians, which aims to promote a streamlined holistic approach to the management of AF, and ensure that the danger of complications is minimised.

The researchers enrolled a cluster of 3,324 AF patients aged over 18 years from 40 cities across China. The patients were randomized with 1678 receiving usual care and 1646 receiving integrated care based on a mobile AF Application (mAFA) incorporating the ABC Pathway: ‘A’ Avoid stroke; ‘B’ Better symptom management; ‘C’ Cardiovascular and other comorbidity risk reduction. All patients were followed up in outpatient clinics at 6 and 12 months.

Results

Upon completion of the study, the researchers were able to show that occurrences of stroke, systemic thromboembolism, death and rehospitalisation were significantly lower with those patients in the mHealth intervention group compared to those undergoing usual care (1.9% compared with 6%). Rehospitalisation rates were also notably reduced, with only 1.2% of patients in the intervention group needing to be readmitted to hospital, in comparison to 4.5% of patients in the control group.

In addition to these positive figures, subgroup analyses by gender, age, type of condition, risk score and comorbidities, demonstrated consistently lower risks for the composite outcome for patients receiving the mAFA intervention compared to usual care.

These results show an undeniable benefit for the adoption of an integrated approach to monitoring and treating cardiac conditions such as AF.

With smart technologies such as phones, watches and integrated smart home systems becoming increasingly accessible and affordable, the ability for clinicians and researchers to adopt this technology to passively and unobtrusively gather a seemingly unlimited amount of data and information on the global health population is offering boundless opportunity for assessing and treating all manner of diseases and conditions.

Integrated care approach

Associate Professor Guo, said: “Our study clearly highlights the need for an integrated care approach to holistic AF care, supported by mobile health technology, as it help to reduce the risks of rehospitalisation and clinical adverse events.”

Professor Lip, said: “Improved AF care requires early detection which enables the implementation of the priorities of AF management, which is as ‘easy as ABC’: Avoid stroke; Better symptom optimisation; Cardiovascular and risk factor management. Our clinical trial shows how the mAFA App and smart devices can improve detection of AF and the holistic management of AF patients, improving outcomes in this common heart rhythm disorder.”

Source: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-03-smart-devices-adverse-outcomes-common.html