Abstract
This article presents the design, technical implementation, and feasibility evaluation of mCardia—a context-aware, mobile electrocardiogram (ECG) collection system for longitudinal arrhythmia screening under free-living conditions. Along with ECG, mCardia also records active and passive contextual data, including patient-reported symptoms and physical activity. This contextual data can provide a more accurate understanding of what happens before, during, and after an arrhythmia event, thereby providing additional information in the diagnosis of arrhythmia. By using a plugin-based architecture for ECG and contextual sensing, mCardia is device-agnostic and can integrate with various wireless ECG devices and supports cross-platform deployment. We deployed the mCardia system in a feasibility study involving 24 patients who used the system over a two-week period. During the study, we observed high patient acceptance and compliance with a satisfactory yield of collected ECG and contextual data. The results demonstrate the high usability and feasibility of mCardia for longitudinal ambulatory monitoring under free-living conditions. The article also reports from two clinical cases, which demonstrate how a cardiologist can utilize the collected contextual data to improve the accuracy of arrhythmia analysis. Finally, the article discusses the lessons learned and the challenges found in the mCardia design and the feasibility study.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 20 |
Journal | Acm Transactions on Computing and Healthcare |
Volume | 3 |
Issue number | 2 |
Number of pages | 28 |
ISSN | 2637-8051 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2022 |
Keywords
- Arrhythmia
- Arrhythmia screening
- Mobile health
- mHealth
- Electrocardiogram (ECG)
- Mobile Sensing
- Holter monitoring
- Cardiovascular
- Context aware ECG