Best scientific papers of the year 2023 about consumer grade heart rate monitors – why did we not find those?

Last Updated on December 9, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org

Rob ter Host entiteled his last YouTube video which was releases two weeks ago «scientific review» about «Best scientific heath devices» This is his front page of his video and Rob entitels the video «Best Health and Sports Trackers in 2023 : Scientist’s Top Picks».

This is contoversial as we have discussed previously:

We alternatively suggest to read the following papers. This is our own subjective choice based on our own litte experience. We did no do a scientific study to justify our choice. But the choice of the MRIS is the following. All of these papers where not published in the year 2023, but we still think it is worth reading those or at least studying the content, since it is a row of paper which appears logical to us.

Three of those where performed at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.

Last author of 3 papers was

Cardiologist Milind Desai, MD, MBA

who has 4.9 out of 5 stars of 262 Patient Satisfaction Ratings:

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/staff/6670-milind-desai

Desai speeks English, Gujarati, Hindi

Gujarati language is spoken by more than 46 million people most of these reside in the Indian state of Gujarat, though there are significant diaspora communities around the world, especially in the United Kingdom and the United States.

The first paper of a series of paper which seems logical to us personally was published in

the journal

Medicine Science Sports Exercise

in 2017

Aug;49(8):1697-1703.

The title was

Variable Accuracy of Wearable Heart Rate Monitors during Aerobic Exercise

https://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Fulltext/2017/08000/Variable_Accuracy_of_Wearable_Heart_Rate_Monitors.22.aspx

It is a first paper with cardiologist Milind Y. Desai, M.D as a last author. This is extraordinary in the sense that it is the first paper we know that was written by a group of cardioloigsts and not by a group of sports scientists about this topic. The paper compares the accuracy of several consumer grade heart rate monitor to a very expensive 3 channel ECG device which is also used for clinical applications.

Then a second paper with Milind Y. Desai as last author was published:

Selena R Pasadyn, Mohamad Soudan, Marc Gillinov, Penny Houghtaling, Dermot Phelan, Nicole Gillinov, Barbara Bittel, Milind Y Desai

Cardiovascular Diagnosis and Therapy 2019 Aug;9(4):379-385.

Accuracy of commercially available heart rate monitors in athletes: a prospective study

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6732081/

This paper was critizised from DC Rainmaker to be something not to be a real life scenario. But we can follow the authors of the paper to have chosen a very simple protocol on the treadmill which start at zero and goes up to about 15 km/h.

Rob ter Horst critisized these king of scientific studies with 3 channel ECG devices not directly but he reviewed a paper from the Swiss Federal Institute of Sports in Magglingen where the accuracy of a Holter ECG multi channel device was compared to a Polar H10 chest strap. Rob ter Horst concluded on YouTube on this Polar H10 that the Polar H10 has the «best heart rate» with 99.6 as compared to a Holter ECG device.

But again we can follow the logic of the papers of the Cleveland Clinic. What stroke was, first these authors have chosen a very expensive clinical grade reference device which is also used to perform clinical studies. This makes this paper extraordinary in the sense that according to our own little exerience it is a paper of a very high quality where there is a logic behind it.

A second fact stroke us that the authors only performed tests on a treadmill up to about 15 km/h. Why not at higher speeds? We found the answer which appears logical to us as well from the g.tec medical support when they answered us to our questions some time ago that they do not know of a manufacturer which has solved the problem of ECG motion artifacts. These can according to g.tec medical only be minimized for instance by using active electrodes which are very expensive. This is for us personally a logical explanation that the paper we mentioned above used a treadmill protocol which was not faster than about 15 km/h.

From this second paper where cardiologist Milind Y. Desai was last author no further paper was published using the same protocol. The last Apple watch they tested with this protocol was the Apple watch 3. Why did they not test the Apple watches 4 to 9 with this protocol? If it would be a research topic of interest for cardioloigsts whould these authors not have done it? But they have not.

Here we have the list of papers of Milind Y. Desai on Google Scholar:

https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=de&user=1GmsQ1QAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate

If we search on google scholar Milind Y. Desai and Apple watch we can find this result:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=de&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=milind+desai+apple+watch&btnG=

The complete list of papers with cardiologist Milind Y. Desai about Apple watches. Two more papers which we did not mention are listed there which use the Apple watch 4.

One is about the

Accuracy of Apple Watch for Detection of Atrial Fibrillation

https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.119.044126

But the authors did not use a treadmill protocol for this study. Have they given up this research topic? And did they find a new research topic and that is to use the Apple watch 4 for detection of Atrial Fibrillation? Also the choice of the Apple watch 4 as a model seems logical to us personally to choose after the Apple watch 1, the Apple watch 3 and then the Apple watch 4, the latest models from Apple which where on the market to perform a scientific studies.

But did this paper have any practical implications for medical doctors so that they choose the Apple watch 4 to detect Atrial Fibrillation?

A paper which seems logical in this row of papers is a paper which was published

in

Nature Reviews Cardiology

and the title was

The Apple Watch can detect atrial fibrillation: so what now?

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41569-019-0330-y

The only author of this paper was

Gregory M. Marcus

of the

Division of Cardiology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA

Dr. Gregory Marcus is a cardiologist and electrophysiologist who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of arrhythmias, including cardiac mapping and catheter ablation for atrial fibrillation:

https://www.ucsfhealth.org/providers/dr-gregory-marcus

Gregory M. Marcus has published a lot of papers:

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=tC2t-3YAAAAJ&hl=de&oi=ao

We do not want to comment on this paper which was published in Nature Reviews Cardiology. But it was the last paper which stroke us in a series of papers which seems logical to us personally, logical in that sense that cardiologists such as Milind Y. Desai from the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio are studying if it is possible to use consumer grade heart rate monitors such as Apple watch for clinical and research applications.

Reviewers on Youtube such as Rob ter Horst do scientific «scientific reviews» about «Best scientific heath devices» as mentioned above. But also cardiologists such as Milind Y. Desai from the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio did perform such studies and published papers about this topic. And the finding which stroke us the most about this topic is the answer of Gregory M. Marcus published in Nature Reviews Cardiology. The Apple Watch can detect atrial fibrillation: so what now? This is also logical in that row of papers we mentioned.

Is this not only logical as well, that if these devices where really helpful for medical and research applications would not the manufacturer themselves have studied this topic first and would they not have launched specialized products for this? But they didn’t.

But all the same despite of this negative result we are very happy about the studies of cardiolgists such as Milind Y. Desai from the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio from which we have learned that these devices are basically consumer grade devices and not designed for medical or research grade applications, and no scientists or medical doctors could convince us personally that these devices are helpful tools to use those for clinical and research purpose for our own specialized application.

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